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V 



SHE OPENED ONE OF THE LETTERS 





MARGERY 
MORRIS and 
PLAIN JANE 

By 

VIOLET GORDON GRAY 

Author of “ Margery Morris* * 

“ Margery Morris, Mascot ** 


Illustrated by 

ADA C. WILLIAMSON 


THE PENN PUBLISHING 
COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 
1920 



COPYRIGHT 
1920 BY 
THE PENN 
PUBLISHING 
COMPANY 



Margery Morris and Plain Jane 


AUG 10 1920 


©CU597141 


Introduction 


The first book, “ Margery Morris,” was the 
story of a young girl in a quaint old Quaker 
town in New Jersey. It told of the friends 
she made and the fun and mishaps she had, and 
of the great surprise she received at the end. 

The second book, “ Margery Morris, Mas- 
cot,” is the account of the winter and spring 
that followed the events in the first book. 
Margery, who longed for a career, hit upon 
the unassuming one of “ mascot ” and decided 
to bring all the happiness she could into the 
lives of others. Unfortunately this was not 
as simple as it seemed, and her well-intentioned 
efforts brought her embarrassment and trial. 
She struggled on, however, until just as she 
was on the point of giving way to discourage- 
ment, a final resolution to stick it out brings 
her success and happiness once more. 

The third book, “ Margery Morris and 
Plain Jane,” tells of the summer Margery 
spends at the beautiful seashore place of Wy- 
5 


6 


INTRODUCTION 


anoke, where she lives a wonderfully happy 
and healthy out-of-door life surrounded by her 
friends. Among these is a new friend, Jane 
Gale, or “ Plain Jane,” as she calls herself, 
who is suffering from a keen disappointment 
and is discouraged and sad. Margery helps 
her to a more normal view of life, and when the 
shadow of tragedy creeps near them, they both 
learn some great truths and a new peace and 
happiness. 


Contents 


I. 

Jane 



ii 

II. 

The Letter 



24 

III. 

Margery .... 



36 

IV. 

“ Three Awful Boys ” 



48 

V. 

The Dance 



64 

VI. 

“ Oh Yes, of Course ” 



87 

VII. 

At the Kopper-Kettle . 



99 

VIII. 

“ I’m So Glad You’re Going 

>> 


XI 3 

IX. 

Old Wickerwork 



121 

X. 

Swimming .... 



*33 

XI. 

Guests .... 



*45 

XII. 

“ Along the Salem Road ” 



x 59 

XIII. 

Plans .... 



176 

XIV. 

A Literary Pilgrimage . 



r 93 

XV. 

Wyanoke Again 



207 

XVI. 

“ What’s the Matter ? ” 



219 

XVII. 

Doubts .... 



232 

XVIII. 

Mishaps and Hitches 



244 

XIX. 

Poor Katie 



262 

XX. 

On the Wharf 



277 

XXI. 

“ Where is Margery ?” . 



287 

XXII. 

Waiting .... 



301 

XXIII. 

Open Doors 



308 


7 
























Illustrations 


PAGE 

She Opened One of the Letters . . Frontispiece 

“ I Never Knew that Anybody Could Have 

Such a Good Time ” 83 

But the Former Race-Horse Plunged On . 129 

She Was too Tired and Unhappy to Care 

What Happened ..... 222 

“To Think,” She Said, “That Friday is 

My Birthday” 312 


Margery Morris and Plain Jane 


9 


















































































































































































































Margery Morris and 
Plain Jane 


CHAPTER I 

JANE 

The wind blew softly in from the sea, stir- 
ring the branches of the pine-tree, stunted and 
bent by winter storms, and nodded the daisies 
blooming in the tall grass. It fluttered the 
blue cloak of the girl on the boulder, and 
played with the locks of dark hair escaping 
from under the edges of the red silk handker- 
chief bound about her head. It even took lib- 
erties with the uncompromising headgear of 
the five middle-aged ladies who, grouped in a 
semicircle, were busily engaged in sketching 
the pine-tree and the girl. 

“ I'm so tired of posing,” sighed J ane plain- 
11 


12 


MJRGERT MORRIS 


tively. “ I’ve sat here on this hard rock and 
stared at that cow tethered over there so long 
that when I turn my eyes and look out on the 
bay I can see the cow floating in the air.” 

“ It has impressed itself on the retina of 
your eye, Jane,” explained one of the ladies 
learnedly. 

“ You can rest after a while,” remarked an- 
other. 

“ Besides, you may look anywhere you 
wish — except when I’m painting your eyes,” 
chimed in a third. 

The good ladies were not at all inclined to 
pause in their morning’s work, especially since 
they had captured such a charming model and 
such a delightful spot wherein to paint. 

Jane flushed and fixed her eyes once more 
on the cow. She wished wearily that when five 
of the dullest and most inefficient members of 
her art class had happened to come along the 
road past her cottage that morning and in- 
sisted on her posing for them under her 
“ lovely ” pine-tree she had been quick-witted 
and resolute enough to refuse. Her fatal shy- 
ness again! Overcome with embarrassment 
she had stood first on one foot and then on the 


AND PLAIN JANE 13 

other, stammering something inarticulate, and 
had finally found herself wrapped in her blue 
cloak with a red silk handkerchief bound round 
her head for a piece of “ nice color,” sitting on 
a hard and uncomfortable rock staring at a 
cow. There were so many things that she 
wanted to do that morning, too ! 

She wished that she were not too shy to tell 
them firmly that she was tired and was going 
to stop posing — for a few minutes while she 
rested, at any rate. For poor bashful Jane 
there was little pleasure in meeting her fellow- 
beings. And, as though she were not shy 
enough already there was always her unruly 
tongue to trip her up and cause her an agony 
of mortification. That dreadful tongue that 
would order “ keys and parrots ” for dinner, 
when all that Jane desired was peas and car- 
rots, and that made her “ shoo some buys,” 
when she only wanted to buy some shoes, and 
that told guests that she was so sorry that they 
had come, when she was trying to express her 
pleasure at their arrival. If she had only been 
able to obtain the self-assurance possessed by 
some of her schoolmates, Jane would willingly 
have suffered martyrdom. 


14 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“ To think,” suddenly remarked one of the 
sketchers, waving her brush in the direction of 
Jane’s little cottage, “ that little house was 
probably once painted white, a regular little 
white green-shuttered, red-roofed, elm-shaded, 
New-England home.” 

Jane forgot her shyness for the moment. 
“ Oh, I love the wonderful, silvery-gray the 
storms have faded it into,” she said breath- 
lessly. “ I like it much better than white 
paint! I know the place is shamrackle — ram- 
shackle, I mean — and down at the heel — but if 
it were all ship-shape and painted up, we could 
rent it well, and then we’d be too conscientious 
to stay in it, I suppose. Besides, it is artistic — 
just look at it now with that big bed of phlox 
and larkspur against its gray walls. No, in- 
deed, no white paint for me! ” 

“ Oh, I didn’t mean to say anything against 
your cottage,” hastily apologized the other. 
“ I — I meant to say wasn’t it just funny to 
think that it once had paint on it. Indeed — I 
think it’s very pretty — much more artistic this 
way.” 

“ Keep the pose, please, Miss Gale,” ordered 
a gray-haired little lady behind a tall bamboo 


AND PLAIN JANE 1 5 

travelling easel. “ I am just painting your 
cap against the trunk of the pine-tree.” 

Obediently, Jane screwed herself into the 
attitude she had held most of the morning, and 
let her thoughts drift off to the little cottage. 

The little place, Buttercup Cottage, as it 
was called, had been left to Jane together with 
a tiny income on the death of her godmother 
the winter before. For years Jane and her 
mother and elder sister had lived in boarding- 
houses, and the thought of having a home had 
always appeared to her the most delightful 
thing on earth. How she envied the girls who 
had big, comfortable homes, and big, comfort- 
able families, and big, comfortable incomes. 

Mrs. Gale was a busy, hard- worked teacher, 
who added to a slender income by tutoring out- 
side of school hours, and Jane’s elder sister, 
Marion, a pretty, frail girl of eighteen, was 
the private secretary of a busy woman doctor. 
Jane could remember a time when things had 
been different, when her father was alive and 
there had been a pretty house and plenty of 
money. Her mother had been a young woman 
then, gay and charming, and there were many 
lively and amusing people coming to the house. 


16 MARGERY MORRIS 

Jane, remembering the pretty, merry young 
mother who was always going off to dinners 
and theatre parties in the loveliest of dresses, 
often wondered how her mother stood the 
monotonous grind of her present life. 

But now, she felt, things were going to be 
different. They had the little cottage where 
Jane and her mother could spend long, restful 
summers, and Marion come for her two weeks’ 
vacation. And “ Aunt ” Jane’s little legacy 
would allow Jane to study at the summer art 
school held in the adjoining town of Winches- 
ter, and perhaps permit her to have some art 
lessons in the winter, instead of having to serve 
as a nursery governess after school hours to 
an obstreperous family of young children. It 
would rescue her mother, too, from the tutor- 
ing she found such a strain, and give Marion 
some of the pretty clothes and simple pleasures 
her young soul longed for. 

Jane’s eyes sparkled as she thought of the 
happy summer they were going to have, and 
with an involuntary thrill of happiness she sud- 
denly drew up her knees and resting her soft 
cheek against them, breathed a little song of 
thanksgiving. 


AND PLAIN JANE 17 

“ Miss Gale! ” protested a shocked voice, 
“ keep the pose — please! ” 

Jane hastily straightened herself out, and 
wished impatiently that those tiresome women 
would go home. There was such a lot that she 
wanted to do that morning! Things that 
Cousin Wilhelmina would be certain to get 
wrong. Her mother had been away ever since 
the close of school, tutoring the daughter of a 
wealthy old friend, and she would be home now 
in a day or two. Jane, who had been painting 
and refurbishing with her own deft hands the 
little sitting-room of the cottage, was anxious 
to have it entirely finished before then. If 
only those women hadn’t caught her! 

A bell rang on a yacht anchored in the bay 
below. Jane twitched. 

“ I’m afraid,” she said despairingly, “ that I 
can’t pose much longer. It’s almost noon, and 
I haven’t got anything yet for lunch. And the 
doors we steal at in the village close at one on 
Wednesdays.” 

“ ‘ The doors you steal at,’ ” murmured a 
horrified voice. 

Jane giggled. “ I mean,” she cried, “ the 
stores where we deal. They close at one on 


i8 


MARGERY MORRIS 


Wednesdays so that the shop people can have 
a half-holiday. And then I have to go to the 
refrigerator for the mail. ,, For some reason, 
when she was nervous or embarrassed, Jane al- 
ways spoke of post-offices, banks, elevators and 
all such institutions of public service as “ re- 
frigerators ” and posted her letters, deposited 
money, or was shot skyward in a department 
store, all in a refrigerator. 

The leader of the sketchers drew out her 
watch. “ We’ll have to hurry, if we’re going 
to catch that half-past twelve trolley,” she an- 
nounced, “ and if we don’t get it, we won’t get 
any lunch.” 

“ I don’t see why they can’t wait for us,” 
sighed the little lady who was always late. 

“ That’s the worst of boarding-houses,” com- 
plained another, beginning to pack up her 
sketching things. “ They are so fussy about 
meals being on time.” 

Jane caught at a swaying branch of pine 
above her head and pulled herself to her feet. 
“ Let me see what kind of a creature you have 
made of me,” she laughed. “ Think of having 
one’s portrait painted by five such geniuses.” 

There seemed to have been a difference of 


AND PLAIN JANE 19 

opinion among the five as to Jane’s actual ap- 
pearance. One had pictured her with an eagle 
beak of pronounced Roman tendencies and a 
small retreating chin, while to another her chin 
was long and aggressive below a pert and as- 
piring nose. While a third had boldly and 
originally provided her with a basin-face. In 
only one of the portraits was there any resem- 
blance to the real Jane with her delicate fea- 
tures, and wide, dreaming, gray eyes. “ Plain 
Jane ” she called herself, for to Jane, and to 
her contemporaries, she was too fragile and too 
colorless to be pretty. Only those of her el- 
ders who were possessed of the seeing eye rec- 
ognized the beauty that might develop under 
a happier and more care-free life. 

The ladies having departed with many last 
words and kind promises to return soon to 
paint Jane again, she dashed into the house, 
threw her cloak on the chair, and pinning on a 
wide black hat in place of the discarded red 
handkerchief, ran down the narrow road that 
wound its way above the rocks to the elm- 
shaded, white-housed, old fishing village of 
Wyanoke. The sun shone down w r armly upon 
her and a fresh breeze stirred the late daisies 


20 


MARGERY MORRIS 


and buttercups in the long grass beside the 
road. A bluebird swayed on a wild rose-bush 
just bursting into bloom and sang of summer 
joys. Below the rocks the blue waters of the 
bay sparkled in the sunshine, the white sail- 
boats darted hither and thither, and an ocean- 
going yacht, slender and graceful, lay an- 
chored. 

With a sigh of happiness, Jane bent down to 
pick a cluster of fragrant wild strawberries. 
How perfect it all was. And what a wonder- 
ful summer they were going to have. 

The clock in the village steeple struck half- 
past twelve, and with a gasp Jane stopped 
dreaming and sped on her way. The shops 
would be closed if she did not hurry. But as 
she ran, she could not keep her eyes from the 
bay and the great sand-dunes on the opposite 
shore standing dazzling white against a cloud- 
less blue sky. The road turned abruptly at 
the end of the rocky promontory and led down 
the hill into the village. With her head turned 
for a last backward glance at bay and shore, 
J ane dashed around the corner, almost straight 
into the mud-guard of an automobile just 
rounding the turn. 


AND PLAIN JANE 21 

With a startled scream she threw herself 
back, caught her heel in a tuft of grass and 
came down full length on her side in a cluster 
of daisies. There was a violent screeching of 
brakes and the car stopped a few feet farther 
on. Its driver, and the young girl with him, 
jumped out and ran back to her. 

“ I hope you aren’t hurt,” they both cried at 
once. 

Jane scrambled to her feet and stood gaz- 
ing at a pleasant faced lad and a very pretty 
young girl about her own age. “ I’m not 
a bit hurt,” she assured them as soon as she 
could get her breath. “ I’m — I’m just — 
startled.” 

“ I do hope you’re not hurt,” repeated the 
boy. 

“ We’re ever so sorry,” chimed in the girl, 
pulling her hat from off her blond curls and 
fanning Jane violently, evidently feeling that 
first aid of some kind must be rendered. “ I 
do hope that you’re not hurt.” 

“ Not a bit,” murmured Jane politely, be- 
ginning to realize that she was feeling rather 
shaken. 

“ We were so absorbed in that view — forgot 


22 


MARGERY MORRIS 


to blow my horn — ran into you . . the 

boy explained in a breath. 

“ I’m afraid that I ran into you — I ought to 
have heard you coming, but I was so absorbed 
in the view.” 

They all laughed. 

A silence fell, then for no reason they all 
laughed again. 

Jane felt her fatal shyness stealing upon 
her; she ought to hurry on her way, she knew, 
but her feet seemed fastened to the ground for 
all eternity. 

“ I wonder,” asked the girl, pinning her hat 
back on her curls, “ if you could tell us how to 
get to Vinehaven — and about how far it is. A 
box of books belonging to my grandfather was 
sent there by mistake — and we’re chasing 
after it.” 

“ Yes,” echoed the lad, “ I wonder if you 
could tell us. I’m just here for the day and 
I’m not very well up on the country round 
about, and the directions of the old chap at the 
express office were pretty confusing.” 

Jane flushed. “ I — I — really don’t know 
how to get there. It’s somewhere in that di- 
rection,” waving a vague hand toward the hori- 


AND PLAIN JANE 23 

zon. “ I think that it’s about ten miles, 
though, as the fly crows.” She stopped, and 
her face flushed still more crimson. “ I mean,” 
she corrected in a low voice, “ it’s about ten 
miles as — as the crow flies.” 

They all laughed once more and Jane went 
on: 

4 4 But almost anyone along the road can tell 
you how to get there. But perhaps — you’d 
better ask at the refrigerator. I mean,” she 
cried, 44 1 mean the post-office ! ” 

Then feeling that she had succeeded in com- 
pletely disgracing herself, she turned on her 
heel and ran down the road toward the village. 


CHAPTER II 

THE LETTER 

All the way down the hill J ane scolded her- 
self. Why, she asked herself indignantly, 
must she always turn scarlet, and be flustered 
in that ridiculous way? Why couldn’t she be 
dignified and polite and self-confident like 
other girls? That nice boy and girl had looked 
so bewildered. How unconscious the girl 
was — and how pretty, with her blond curls tied 
back with a wide black ribbon. She wished 
Marion and her mother could have seen her. 
And the boy was so nice and polite ; her mother, 
she thought, would have said that there was 
strength in his square chin, and humor in his 
rather long upper lip and turned-up nose; 
while Marion would have admired his black 
hair and the blue eyes that seemed all the bluer 
for the clear tan of his skin. She wondered 
who the young people were and if they would 
24 


AND PLAIN JANE 25 

belong to the summer colony she had watched 
with so much interest and a certain wistful- 
ness the summer before when she had paid 
“Aunt ” Jane a visit at Buttercup Cottage. 

“ Well, I won’t get to know them, any- 
way — they will be too busy having a good time 
to notice a dull thing like me,” Jane sighed, 
with a vindictive jerk at the head of a tall daisy 
growing by the roadside. “ I’m just tired and 
sick of always looking on at other people hav- 
ing a good time. I’m just like a little darky 
boy plastering his nose against the window of 
a candy shop. I wonder how it seems to be 
pretty and popular, and to have a good time. 
I wonder how it feels to look like that girl.” 

In a moment or two, Jane forgot all 
thoughts about being pretty or not being 
pretty in the never failing pleasure of the 
quaint village street with its spreading elms 
and old houses, painted white and set in green 
dooryards. Again she thanked the memory 
of the kind godmother who had given her the 
little home by the sea. 

Her purchases over, she turned another cor- 
ner and stopped before the village post-office. 
She always rather dreaded the sorting of the 


26 


MARGERY MORRIS 


noon mail, for that was the social hour of the 
village when the summer people and the 
“ natives ” flocked to the little building to 
chatter and gossip and make engagements for 
the rest of the day. Jane never felt quite so 
alone and out of place as when she was among 
that gay crowd. Everyone seemed to know 
everybody else, and she to know scarcely any- 
one beyond a few of the old ladies who had 
been acquaintances of her godmother’s, a fisher- 
man or two, and the woman who maltreated 
the clothes under the name of washing them. 

To-day almost everyone had gone, and there 
were only a few stragglers left, absorbed in 
the letters they were reading. 

Jane hurried forward to the window. “Any 
mail for me, Mrs. Goodwin? ” 

The postmistress hesitated. “ What’s yer 
name? ” she demanded. 

“ Jane Gale,” answered Jane briefly. It 
was rather a sore point with her that Mrs. 
Goodwin never could remember her name. 
She always seemed to know the names of all 
the other cottagers. 

Mrs. Goodwin reached behind a row of 
pigeonholes and after slowly thumbing over 


AND PLAIN JANE 27 

a pile of mail, agonizing to eager Jane, she 
handed over two letters and a paper. 

Once more in the green, sun-flecked street, 
Jane opened one of the letters, and as she 
walked slowly along skimmed its pages. 

“ Dearest Janeykins,” it began, “ I do hope 
you are well and being a good girl.” Jane 
smiled at this, for never did her mother com- 
mence a letter to her without it. “And that 
you are not making Cousin Willy too much 
trouble. Be certain to order the things you 
and she like — and don’t worry about its being 
extravagant. It seems hard to realize that I’ll 
be with you in a few days, and that my stay 
here is almost over. It has been a wonderful 
change for me, and I feel like another person. 
Alice is a dear child, and no trouble at all to 
teach. I feel certain that with the coaching 
she’s had she will be able to enter Miss Hylan’s 
next fall.” 

Jane stood still, and reading carefully the 
next few lines, noted with satisfaction that her 
mother seemed in better health and spirits than 
she had been for a long time. Then skipping 
an account of several long automobile rides and 
a dinner with some old friends, she put the 


28 


MARGERT MORRIS 


letter in her pocket and went on her home- 
ward way. 

At the end of the village where the road 
turned and climbed up toward the top of the 
hill, stood a long, low, white stucco cottage 
with verandas and brick terraces running out 
to the very rocks themselves, and a large gar- 
den, gay with old-fashioned flowers, sweet- 
williams and columbines, pansies and bleeding- 
heart, and now Damask roses and brilliant 
phlox just coming into bloom, between the 
house and the street. It had been closed dur- 
ing the beginning of the season, for its artist 
owner was abroad, but Jane had noticed sev- 
eral days before that someone was living there. 
“ It’s too ducky a house,” she had said to Cousin 
Willy, “ to be all blind and sad behind closed 
shutters. It ought to have somebody young 
and pretty living there to make it gay.” 

As J ane neared it, a handsome old man and 
two ladies, evidently mother and daughter, 
came to the gate and stood there chatting. 
They seemed very gay and happy, pleased with 
themselves and the world. She noted with a 
wistful pang their care-free expression. “ That 
might be mother and Marion,” she thought. 


AND PLAIN JANE 29 

“ That girl is just about Marion’s age. I wish 
that Marion looked as rosy and strong as she 
does. But it’s wonderful,” with a sigh of con- 
tentment, “ to think that mother is going to be 
here all summer, and that she can get really 
rested and built up.” 

The little group dissolved ; the old gentleman 
turned back to the house, and the others moved 
off toward the cluster of handsome villas known 
as Perkins Point, the girl calling back as she 
went, “ Don’t you think, Mr. Morris, that 
Margery and I might be bridesmaids? ” 

Her mother laughed and, pulling at her 
sleeve, urged her onward. 

Idly wondering who was to be married and 
thinking how delightful it must be to have a 
wide circle of friends and go to weddings and 
parties, Jane continued on her way. She had 
only been to two weddings in all her quiet life, 
but she considered them the most delightful of 
functions and longed to go to more. 

“ I wonder who those people are,” she 
thought with a backward glance at the cottage. 
“ That man is handsome and distinguished 
enough to be someone — but I do wish he were 
young and pretty to go with his house.” 


MARGERY MORRIS 


3 ° 

At the top of the rocks Jane sat down on a 
boulder beside the road to finish her mother’s 
letter. “When I come home, Janey dear, I 
have a strange piece of news to tell you. I do 
hope that for my sake you will take it bravely, 
and that you will realize how much happiness 
it will bring into our lives. And indeed, dear, 
my joy is not all selfish. I cannot but feel that 
it will make life take a turn for you and Marion 
and be cheerful now. My girls have been so 
brave and patient. And remember, dear, al- 
ways, how much I love you.” 

Jane read over the letter slowly and care- 
fully, and then read it again. “ What does it 
mean? ” she thought with a clutch at her heart. 
“ Oh, it’s all right — of course, it’s all right,” 
she reassured herself. “ Mother said it would 
bring happiness.” 

She sat staring at the distant sand-dunes. 
“ I wonder what it can be,” she repeated. 
“ Can mother have obtained a new position — 
somewhere that will take her away from us? 
Well, anyway,” she comforted herself, “ it’s all 
right, mother said so. She said that things are 
going to take a turn and be cheerful. That 
proves that things are all right. And anyway, 


AND PLAIN JANE 31 

even if she does have to go away to some other 
school, she’ll be here all summer.” 

She rose slowly and went on her way. The 
sun still shone down warmly, the bay still 
sparkled, and the wind still nodded the wild 
rose-bushes; she found another wild straw- 
berry and ate it; but her mood had changed. 
To her volatile nature the berries had lost their 
savor, the sun was glaring, and the sea wind 
brought with it a threat of rain or fog; the bay 
seemed uninteresting. 

“ I do wish that mother hadn’t said ‘ take it 
bravely,’ ” she thought at last, impatient with 
her own depression. “ That’s what is making 
me feel sad. Besides,” she consulted her letter 
again, “ she says life will ‘ take a turn and be 
cheerful.’ Perhaps if she does go away she’ll 
have a very much larger salary.” 

She tucked her packages tighter under her 
arms and ran across the grass to the side 
door of Buttercup Cottage, singing to herself, 
“ take a turn and be cheerful, be cheerful, be 
cheerful.” 

In the charming dining-room with its quaint 
little old-fashioned fireplace, and low windows, 
Jane found a gray -haired little woman, whose 


MARGERY MORRIS 


3 2 

primness seemed incongruous with her rosy 
plumpness, perched on the top of a tall step- 
ladder. “ Oh, Cousin Willy/' she cried, sud- 
denly resolving to say nothing about her 
mother's letter, “ here are the things for lunch- 
eon — and I’m almost starved. What are you 
doing? ” she added with a laugh. 

Cousin Willy scrambled down with remark- 
able agility considering her weight and gray 
hairs. “ Why, you see, Jane,” she explained, 
“ I bought this cretonne at a bargain one day — 
not that I wanted it — but it was so cheap. 
And I thought that I had better get it, for you 
never know — and it just occurred to me it 
might make nice hangings for the windows.” 

Jane looked at the cretonne, her quick 
artistic sense rebelling at its glaring color in 
her cool little green and white dining-room, but 
she only said tactfully, “ Well, we can try the 
curtains and then if we don’t like them after a 
day or two, we can take them down.” 

Still humming her little song, “ be cheerful, 
be cheerful, take a turn and be cheerful,” Jane 
went into the kitchen and began to prepare 
luncheon. After the years of boarding-houses, 
J ane delighted in the little kitchen with its win- 


AND PLAIN JANE 33 

dows hung with honeysuckle and its little back 
porch with a view of the sea. She took a 
housewifely pride in the shining pots and pans 
and in the shelf of little boxes labeled cinna- 
mon, ginger, allspice, and sage, and found a 
certain little book, “ Cooking for Two,” more 
soul-satisfying than the most touching novel. 
She almost, but not quite, enjoyed the dish- 
washing. “ It’s lovely up until after the cups 
are washed,” she would declare, dipping the 
glasses delicately into the hot, soapy water, 
“ and it’s fine after it’s all over and you’re put- 
ting the nice clean dishes away, but there’s an 
unpleasant interval between.” 

“ There’s always an unpleasant interval in 
everything,” Cousin Willy would philosophize, 
and deciding that the flowers needed watering, 
or cutting, or looking at, would escape out of 
the kitchen. 

After luncheon was over, Jane took a hand- 
ful of bread-crumbs and went out on the front 
portico, with its graceful hood and narrow high 
benches facing each other, the skilful work of 
some long-dead New England builder. A 
little wren who had built her nest in the top of 
one of the portico posts year after year re- 


MARGERY MORRIS 


34 

garded Jane’s advent as an insult and never 
failed to scold at her in the most vigorous lan- 
guage known to birddom. 

“ To hear you squeaking and shrieking, 
Jennie-wren,” Jane laughed to-day, looking at 
the tiny brown thing perched on the back of 
one of the benches, every feather ruffled and 
little mouth wide open with indignation, “ no 
one would ever imagine that you can sing 
sweetly when you wish to.” 

Idly watching the bird, Jane sat down on 
the doorstep, her hands folded in her lap. 
Luncheon and the cool quiet of the little old 
cottage had soothed her depressed spirit. An 
automobile passed and looking up, she caught 
sight of the boy and girl she had met earlier in 
the morning. The girl recognizing her, 
nodded and waved, and the boy smiled with a 
flash of white teeth. 

“ Who are they, Jane? ” asked her cousin 
behind her. 

“ I don’t know — I saw them in the village 
this morning — they almost ran over me — or I 
almost ran over them — I don’t know which. 
The girl is very pretty — the loveliest blond 
hair, and the boy has the blackest hair and the 


AND PLAIN JANE 35 

bluest eyes and brownest skin I ever saw. 
He’d match your new hat beautifully, Cousin 
Willy,” she added teasingly. Cousin Willy’s 
hats were a constant amusement to Jane. 

“ Did you say they ran over you, or almost 
did? ” 

“ Yes.” Jane flushed, and looked embar- 
rassed. She had remembered suddenly how 
she had stammered and stuttered and the ab- 
surd things she had said. No wonder, she 
thought painfully, that the boy had smiled 
when he saw her. 

“ Why are you looking so flustered? ” asked 
Cousin Willy, and then as Jane only turned 
redder and did not answer, she added, “ Did 
you hear from mother? ” 

“ Yes,” said Jane hastily, “ I had a letter.” 

“ What did she have to say? ” 

“ Oh, nothing much.” 

“ Did she seem well?” prodded Cousin 
Willy. 

“ Yes — oh, yes, very well. And she says 
that life is going to take a churn and be tear- 
ful,” and Jane gazed after the retreating auto- 
mobile, unconscious of how truly she had 
spoken. 


CHAPTER III 


MARGERY 

Cousin Willy's hobby was the pursuit of 
bargains. The department stores were the 
jungle through which she tracked her prey, 
diving through a crowd about a table in the 
center aisle to emerge later with a bunch of 
braid and a battered feather as trophy. The 
value to her lay not in the suitability of the 
article or her need for it, but in its descent. 
“ See,” she would say, displaying a pair of 
green satin slippers, “ two dollars — reduced 
from fifteen. They were made to order for 
somebody who didn’t take them after all. They 

are a little small for me, but ” 

Cousin Willy’s “ second best hobby,” as 
Jane put it, was the training of her young 
cousins. Fearful lest the love of their frankly 
adoring mother might lead them to overrate 
themselves, she rushed to the other extreme 
and revealed to them their every deficiency, 
36 


AND PLAIN JANE 37 

mental and physical, — those that they might 
have in some far distant future, as well as the 
ones that they already had. 

“ If she’d only let you believe in yourself a 
little bit,” Jane would wail. “ Don’t you re- 
member, mother, when we read Stevenson to- 
gether, the part where he said something about 
falling through story after story of the house of 
one’s vanity and sitting rueful among the 
ruins? Well, that’s the way with Cousin 
Willy, she knocks me clean through the house 
of my vanity — and every time I try to get up 
she hits me on the head with a brick-bat.” 

Jane’s mother would sigh and regret to her- 
self that the only relative they had, on whom 
they were forced to depend so much for com- 
panionship, should always be pointing out her 
limitations to Jane, timid, self -depreciating 
Jane, who needed encouragement, not criti- 
cism. 

Cousin Willy was a little more inclined to 
be fault-revealing than usual the day that Mrs. 
Gale was expected home and it was with a 
sense of relief that Jane saw her pin on a large 
hat, a remarkable bargain, and depart to play 
bridge with some acquaintances at the hotel. 


38 MARGERY MORRIS 

Alone in the cottage, Jane arranged a gray 
ginger-jar of wild roses on her mother’s bureau, 
and a big bowl of daisies and buttercups on the 
living-room table, before she put on the white 
linen Mrs. Mulready had just brought home 
from the wash, and her black hat. 

Carefully locking the front door, she hid the 
key, after the trusting fashion of Wyanoke, in 
the little green Japanese wall-vase hanging by 
the front door, and suddenly panic-stricken for 
fear she might be late for the half-past two car, 
sped along the rocks to the winding cross road 
that stopped where, under an enormous elm, an 
ancient crippled Civil War veteran kept a tiny 
general store and waiting-room for the trolley, 
and sold candy and tobacco, yesterday’s news- 
papers and bottles of ginger ale and sarsa- 
parilla. 

In the excitement and hurry and the joy of 
realizing that her mother was almost home 
again, and the wonderful summer they had 
planned together was about to commence, Jane 
forgot to be shy, and chattered away to the old 
storekeeper. 

“ Guess all you young people is goin’ to 
have a fine time this summer,” he remarked in 


AND PLAIN JANE 39 

answer; “there’s a right smart lot of you. 
There’s a family from down to Noo Jersey 
just come — there’s a girl there. She’s got 
bright yeller hair and a big dog, ‘ Waldo,’ I 
heard her a-callin’ him. An’ there’s a friend 
of theim, a Mrs. Endicott from California — 
she’s got a daughter Katherine. Older than 
you, she be. An’ they had a boy with ’em 
t’other day — ain’t seed ’em since, so I guess he 
ain’t here regular. Smart lookin’ fellow he 
was, too; tanned as brown as a nigger, an’ teeth 
as white as a dog’s. An’ I heard this here girl 

from Noo Jersey sayin’ Pshaw, there 

comes yer car.” 

The small, swaying trolley car rounded the 
curve, stopped in front of the little station, and 
Jane got aboard. 

As the car reached the main street of the 
village it stopped again and the pretty girl 
whom Jane had encountered in her collision 
with the automobile got in, carrying a dress- 
suit case. 

“ I wonder if she’s the girl from ‘ Noo Jer- 
sey,’ ” Jane thought, as she watched her pay 
her fare to the conductor at the rear door. 
The other passengers turned to look too, pleas- 


40 


MARGERT MORRIS 


ure in their eyes, and the old gentleman, fat 
and irritable looking, who was sitting across 
the aisle from Jane, actually lowered his news- 
paper for half a minute. Unconscious of the 
little stir her advent had created, the girl 
picked up her dress-suit case and attempted to 
walk to the front of the lurching car, where the 
windows were open. As she swayed up the 
narrow aisle, the car gave an extra lurch as it 
swerved round a comer. She clutched frantic- 
ally at the dangling straps ; but her right foot 
flew out and gave a violent kick to the old gen- 
tleman behind the newspaper, and she col- 
lapsed into a seat, an ignominious heap, her 
hat dangling over one eye. The other pas- 
sengers laughed — all except the old gentle- 
man, who evidently regarded her methods of 
entering trolley cars as one more instance of 
modern bad manners ; while the girl herself sat 
limp and helpless, too overcome with laugh- 
ter even to straighten her hat. Catching 
sight, however, of the old gentleman’s dis- 
gusted countenance, she pulled herself to- 
gether, and apologized with such deference 
and concern that he visibly forgave her, 
and even joined her when, after a struggle 


AND PLAIN JANE 41 

to look grave, she burst into another gale of 
laughter. 

Jane watched her with wistful eyes, envying 
her charm and her unconsciousness. The girl 
turned toward her, but Jane in an agony of 
shyness looked away, wondering miserably if 
the other would recognize her and if she ought 
to speak. But the girl evidently had no such 
doubts; slipping along the seat until she was 
close to Jane, she said frankly: 

“Oh, I’m so glad to see a familiar face! 
But I always do the most dreadful things when 
you are around! First we nearly run over 
you, — and now I go around kicking harmless 
old gentlemen.” 

She stopped, overcome with laughter again, 
while Jane stole a look at her out of the corner 
of her eye; how pretty she was, she thought 
again, a delicate, high-bred prettiness that held 
no hint of self-consciousness or pose. 

“ My name is Morris — Margery Morris,” 
said the girl tentatively, as though in turn she 
would like to know Jane’s name. 

But Jane was too embarrassed to respond to 
the hint. “ You come from New J ersey, don’t 
you? ” she asked, a little breathlessly. 


MARGERY MORRIS 


42 

Margery repressed a smile. “ Yes,” she an- 
swered, “ my grandfather lives there. This is 
my first visit to Wyanoke — I wonder if you 
could tell me where there is a tailor in Win- 
chester? ” 

Jane, absorbed in noting the embroidery on 
Margery’s perfectly fitting pink linen frock, 
and her immaculate white stockings and buck- 
skin pumps, failed to catch the question. “ Oh, 
what? — oh, I beg pardon — I ” 

“ I just asked if you know where there is a 
tailor in Winchester? ” 

Feeling that she had been caught rudely 
staring, Jane grew more embarrassed. “ I 
don’t know,” she murmured, looking in- 
tently out of the window at a passing milk- 
wagon. 

“ Oh,” said Margery. 

Jane turned scarlet. What a rude bumpkin 
she must seem. “ Do you have to know? ” she 
blurted, feeling a desperate need of saying 
something, then turned even redder than be- 
fore. 

Margery appeared not to notice. “Why, 
yes, I do,” she said gayly. “ I’ve been trusted 
to do the family errands. The automobile is 


AND PLAIN JANE 43 

being washed, so I put my things in the dress- 
suit case and came along. My heavy coat got 
so mussed in the trunk that I want to get it 
pressed by a tailor. And then perhaps you 
could tell me where there is a druggist. I 
have to get some medicine for my grandfather. 
I don’t know my way around here very well 
yet.” 

Jane pulled herself together and managed 
to give the required directions without very 
much stammering, and without twisting her 
words beyond saying that the tailor was next 
to the “ shoot bop ” instead of the boot shop. 
Under the stranger’s kindly tact she was even 
able to chat a little about the beauty of 
Wyanoke and the coldness of the bathing. 

The trolley was late in arriving at Win- 
chester, and Jane had just time to run to the 
station as the train came in and the passengers 
swarmed out on the platform. Bewildered by 
all the noise and confusion, she stood looking 
about her, searching with her eyes for her 
mother. 

“ Janey,” cried a laughing voice at her el- 
bow, and turning Jane threw herself into her 
mother’s arms. “ Oh, mother,” she cried, “ I 


44 


MARGERY MORRIS 


was afraid I was late — how well you look — and 
you’ve got a new hat ! ” 

“ I am well, dear. Do you like the hat? I 
felt it was time I had a new one,” and with a 
rapturous squeeze of Jane’s arm, Mrs. Gale 
went to plead with the baggageman to deliver 
her trunk as soon as possible. Baggage com- 
munications between Winchester and Wyanoke 
were always something of a matter of luck and 
the baggageman’s whims. 

As her mother talked with the man, Jane 
studied her, rather puzzled. The new little 
dark blue toque was very becoming and hid 
the gray hairs that of late had been showing in 
the soft brown hair; but more than that her 
mother seemed different to Jane, younger and 
gayer and a little excited. It had not occurred 
to Jane before that her mother was pretty. 

“And now, Janey, I’m through. Let’s 
hurry.” 

“ What have you got to tell me? ” asked 
Jane as they took their places in the trolley 
car. 

Mrs. Gale threw her a startled glance, and 
smiled, while a faint color tinted her thin 
cheeks. “ I’ll tell you later, dear,” she an- 


AND PLAIN JANE 45 

swered with a little squeeze of Jane’s hand. 
“ First tell me all about what’s happened at 
Buttercup Cottage — and how Cousin Willy is. 
Any new bargains yet? ” 

Jane frowned. If there was any news to 
hear she wanted it at once. Still frowning, 
she stared at the great arch of willow trees un- 
der which the car was passing. She hated mys- 
teries — even little ones. 

But her mother was in the midst of a lively 
account of some old friends she had met again 
after years, and in spite of herself Jane re- 
laxed and listened, and listening forgot the 
mystery. 

Their simple supper over, and Cousin Willy’s 
friend from the hotel having come to call on 
her, Jane and her mother put on heavy sweaters 
and slipped out for an evening stroll. As they 
paused for a moment on the doorstep, while 
Jane told her mother about the wren, a great 
mastiff came bounding along the path and be- 
hind him arm in arm with the old gentleman 
she had seen and admired at the gate of her 
favorite cottage was her acquaintance of the 
trolley car. 

She touched her mother to attract her atten- 


MARGERY MORRIS 


46 

tion. “ See that pretty girl,” she said softly. 
“ I was talking to her to-day. That must be 
her grandfather. Her name is Margery Mor- 
ris. But I think that I’ll call them Goldilocks 
and the Bear.” 

(A most unjust title for amiable, courteous 
Mr. Morris, as Jane later came to know.) 

“ Goldilocks ” caught sight of Jane and 
waved to her, and Jane waved back, delighted. 
“ See, mother, see, isn’t she attractive? ” 

“ Yes,” answered her mother, plainly not 
listening. “ Come, Janey.” 

Hands clasped together, they followed the 
path leading away from the cottage and the 
village to Ambrose Cove. There by a huge 
boulder they paused to watch the waves break- 
ing with a roar and up-flung spray against the 
outer points of the two rocky promontories 
that half enclosed the quiet waters of the cove 
and strip of beach. 

“ I am very happy, Janey,” remarked Mrs. 
Gale. 

“ So am I,” agreed Jane with another 
squeeze of her mother’s arm. “ Oh, isn’t it 
perfect! Just look down there, mother. See 
how the outgoing tide has left the sand wet. 


AND PLAIN JANE 47 

and see how it reflects the sunset. Think of 
our being able to come and look at it all sum- 
mer! It’s so wonderful to think that we have 
Buttercup Cottage, and that we are going to 
have the whole long summer together — just 
we two.” 

“ But, Janey,” began her mother hastily. 
“ Suppose something — something even nicer 
than the cottage came — suppose ” 

“ Mother,” cried Jane, “ what was the news 
you had to tell me? ” 

Her mother hesitated. “ I’m going to be 
married, Jane,” she said. 


CHAPTER IV 


THREE AWFUL BOYS 

Two hours later Jane sat stiffly perched on 
the edge of her narrow cot bed staring unsee- 
ingly at the candle on the table across the room. 
The skies of her little world had fallen and 
crushed her. 

Round and round, like a squirrel in a cage, 
her brain revolved. Wearily, she reviewed the 
conversation with her mother, seeking some 
comfort in it, and finding none. 

In a few eager sentences Mrs. Gale had told 
of her engagement to Perry Watkins, the well- 
known scientist, who had formerly been an in- 
timate friend and whom she had not seen for 
many years. He was the kindest and the best, 
and the dearest of men, the very dearest, Mrs. 
Gale had explained with glowing cheeks. Jane 
had frowned, and her mother had gone on 
hastily to say that Dr. Watkins was a widower 
48 


AND PLAIN JANE 49 

with three sons — boys who sadly needed a 
mother and who would welcome two sisters 
with open arms. 

“ They are such dear boys, Janey; you will 
find them real brothers, I know, and come to 
love them. And they do need a mother so! 
Little Andrew made my heart ache, he was so 
pathetically happy at the thought of having a 
‘ really-truly 5 mother. Poor little lad, he 
looked rather neglected, and showed that he 
needed a woman’s interested care. And Perry 
and Jack are such splendid boys. Jack is a 
harum-scarum ; but the oldest boy has inherited 
his father’s fine mind.” 

Jane was silent, and her mother went on 
softly, “ There doesn’t seem to be any reason 
for us to wait to be married. We knew each 
other so well years ago. We’re going to be 
married in August, and then we’ll all go to the 
old country place near the Berkshires. It’s a 
big roomy old house surrounded by elms, and 
a brook goes babbling through one side of the 
lawn.” 

Jane was still silent, and Mrs. Gale talked 
on rapidly, a little frightened by the cold re- 
serve of her usually sympathetic daughter. 


MARGERY MORRIS 


5 ° 

“ There will be motoring and horseback rid- 
ing, and golf and tennis at the country-club — 
and there’s a lake not far away where there’s 
boating and swimming. Everything to make 
young people happy. The place has been 
rented for years — but this summer is going to 
be different.” 

“ What about Marion and me? ” asked Jane 
coldly. 

“ Oh, you’ll be with us, Janey, of course. 
And isn’t it lovely, dear, Mr. Watkins is to 
send Marion to camp in the Maine moun- 
tains, — the doctor urges it. I have been so 
worried about her — her cough has hung on so 
long, and she does seem so frail. But the doc- 
tor thinks that a summer in a higher altitude 
may make all the difference. And, besides, — 
isn’t it fine? — she can be tutored at the camp 
all summer, and then in the winter she will have 
a final year of school, and after that go to 
college.” 

“And is Marion — does Marion know that 
you — that you — that you are going to marry 
this — this man? ” 

“ Why, of course, dear, Marion is so happy 
over it. And indeed, no one could help ad- 


AND PLAIN JANE 51 

miring and loving Mr. Watkins. We all had 
dinner together in town one evening — I was 
sorry to have Marion and the boys know 
about — my — my marriage before you, dearie, 
but I wanted to tell you myself — and letters 
are such unsatisfactory things. But Marion, 
you see, has met him, and she says ” 

“ Oh, mother, mother, Marion’s allowed her- 
self to be bought,” and with a wail Jane turned 
and ran toward the house. 

Safe in her room she locked the door and 
sank down on the edge of the bed. 

Once she got up and lighted the candle, wan- 
dered aimlessly around the room and returned 
to her perch on the edge of the bed. Through 
all the bewilderment and shock, the hurt feel- 
ing hammered in her brain that her mother ex- 
pected her to be glad. Glad? And to wel- 
come the fact of those three dreadful step- 
brothers. Stepbrothers! The candle burned 
lower and lower, the night wind blew in through 
the open windows, cold and damp and salt. 
Below in the living-room she could hear her 
mother and Cousin Willy talking low and 
anxiously. The candle went out, and in the 
darkness Jane slipped hastily out of her 


MARGERY MORRIS 


5 * 

clothes, and tumbling into bed drew the covers 
over her head. 

The sun was high and streaming into the 
room and a light sea wind shook the window 
curtains, when she woke the next morning. 
Jane lay still staring at the flapping curtains, 
dully conscious that her head ached and that 
something had happened to make her unhappy. 

The deep bark of a mastiff and the voices of 
passers-by on their way to the bathing beach 
floated in at the window. 

“ Oh, grandpapa,” came a girlish voice, 
somehow familiar, “ isn’t this the dearest little 
cottage? Won’t Polly be crazy over it? Oh, 
won’t it be a wonderful summer! ” 

In a flash Jane remembered. 

Weak with sobbing, she raised her head at 
last. There were footsteps outside her door, 
and someone shook the handle. 

“ Open the door, Jane,” ordered Cousin 
Willy. 

Reluctantly she obeyed and Cousin Willy 
came in with a tray bearing Jane’s favorite 
breakfast, hot chocolate, buttered toast and 
marmalade. 

“ There, dear, I’ve brought you up your 


AND PLAIN JANE 53 

breakfast,” said Cousin Willy, putting down 
the tray on a stand beside the bed. “ Your 
mother and I had ours two hours ago. It’s a 
wonderful day — you ought to be out and en- 
joying it. Such a pretty girl went by with a 
big mastiff a little while ago.” She glanced at 
Jane standing straight and slim in a sort of de- 
spairing aloofness, and she sighed. “ Is Jane 
going to be difficult? ” her manner said so 
plainly that Jane ordinarily would have 
smiled. 

Then seeing that the girl stood with one slim 
bare foot over the instep of the other for 
warmth, she ordered her back to bed, and as 
Jane obeyed put the tray on her knees. “ Yes, 
it’s a beautiful day,” she went on, wandering 
to the window for inspiration in the task she 
had set herself. 

“ Jane,” she said suddenly, coming back to 
the bed and perching on its edge, “ you love 
your mother, don’t you? ” 

Jane simply looked; Cousin Willy didn’t 
need to be told that her mother was the most 
precious thing in life to her. 

“And you wouldn’t want to make her un- 
happy? Well, you are making her — miser- 


MARGERT MORRIS 


54 

able. And you are spoiling all the new-found 
joy that has come to her.” 

Jane caught her breath. 

“And besides,” Cousin Willy went on, tact- 
lessly effacing the good impression she had 
made, “ you’re such a little goose. Why, think 
of what it all means to you! A stepfather 
who will do anything in the world for you — 
give you everything you want. And step- 
brothers who will adore you. Why, most girls 
would be wild with happiness about it! ” 

With a cry Jane dropped back against the 
pillows. “ Do you suppose those things count 
with me? That I’d give up mother for them? 
Why, I’d rather we would starve — if we were 
together! ” 

“ Perhaps your mother wouldn’t,” said 
Cousin Willy drily, picking up the tray and 
going toward the door. “ I’m sure she has 
toiled hard enough for you all these years, and 
that you’re a very spoiled and ungrateful girl.” 

Jane burst into tears again. 

Toward noon, she dressed and, weak and 
white, dragged herself down-stairs. Her 
mother, who had just come back from the vil- 
lage with a little basket of groceries on her arm. 


AND PLAIN JANE 55 

was arranging a bowl of wild roses in the 
dining-room. She sighed as she caught sight 
of Jane's stricken face, but she made no com- 
ment. 

“See what lovely roses I found this morning, 
Janey dear,” she said, tenderly smoothing 
Jane’s carelessly arranged hair back from her 
pale forehead. “ Such a charming young girl 
was getting some too. I should have liked to 
have made a sketch of her with her white dress 
and blond hair, and the rose-bushes all about 
her. She reminded me of someone I used to 
know, too.” 

“ Yes, I’ve seen her,” answered Jane list- 
lessly. “ She’s the girl I call Goldilocks.” 

“ Luncheon is ready,” announced Cousin 
Willy, and they sat down at the little round 
table drawn up by the open window that over- 
looked the rocky lawn and the bay beyond. 
Conversation at first was strained. When Mrs. 
Gale admired the new doilies that Jane had 
stenciled with buttercups, Jane’s eyes filled 
with tears at the remembrance of how hard she 
had worked to make the cottage pretty for their 
summer together. And a casual inquiry on 
her mother’s part as to whether lobsters were 


S 6 MARGERY MORRIS 

hard to get, caused Jane to choke, for had she 
not planned that they were to have lobster salad 
every Sunday evening for supper? Finally 
Mrs. Gale, seeing that the discussion of home 
matters was accompanied by the danger of 
tears, turned the conversation. 

“ I hear that Elizabeth Marshall’s father-in- 
law has taken a cottage here. Do you remem- 
ber Elizabeth, Willy? She married a Mr. 
Morris from New Jersey. At present she and 
her husband are on their way home from 
Japan — their daughter is with her grandfather 
here.” 

Cousin Willy laughed. “ Yes, I remember 
Elizabeth,” she said. “ Bessie, she was then. 
All of you girls were younger than I, of course, 
and it was beneath me then to feel much inter- 
est in you — but I can still remember Elizabeth’s 
pranks. She was the most harum-scarum, 
mischievous child I ever knew.” 

“And the most enthusiastic — and the most 
affectionate, too. She was an honorable little 
thing, in spite of her prankishness. Kate 
Endicott says the daughter is a good deal like 
her, very pretty — less irrepressible than her 
mother was, but with a good deal of force and 


AND PLAIN JANE 57 

character. She gets the force from the Mor- 
rises, I imagine.’’ 

Jane listened idly, half interested that they 
should be speaking of the girl whose appear- 
ance had so attracted her. Then her eyes 
filled with tears again, as she asked herself 
how her mother could prattle on so carelessly 
about people when all the time the dark shadow 
of “ that man ” was hanging over them. 

At sunset Jane and her mother took another 
walk on the rocks, and the subject of the mar- 
riage was again broached. 

When they came back to the cottage Mrs. 
Gale’s face was white and strained, and Jane 
was again in tears. 

“I can’t stand him, mother — I can’t! I 
can’t! ” 

“ Oh, Janey, dear,” her mother had answered 
despairingly, “you’re breaking my heart!” 

There was another sleepless night for Jane, 
with a heavy, unrefreshing slumber toward 
morning, and another long, woeful day to be 
lived through. Her mother, too, looked sad 
and tired, although her face brightened at the 
thick envelope Cousin Willy brought her from 
the post-office at noon, and with a happier ex- 


58 MARGERT MORRIS' 

pression she went out, carrying the letter with 
her, for a quiet hour on the rocks. 

Cousin Willy had little to say to Jane, but 
that little was pointed. “ I simply cannot un- 
derstand you, Jane,” she had cried. “ Look at 
the different way in which Marion is acting! 
The trouble with you is that you’re spoiled, 
thoroughly spoiled! I don’t see how you can 
make other people so unhappy.” 

And J ane in the dreadful week that followed 
wondered miserably how other people could 
find it in their hearts to make her so unhappy. 
Her mother was as tender and gentle with her 
as ever, but Jane could not help seeing that 
she was hurt and sad. The old comradeship 
between them was gone; where once they would 
have gone for long walks or sketching trips to- 
gether, or sat reading aloud under the pine- 
tree, Jane now wandered alone on the rocks, 
while her mother wrote long letters, or held 
interminable conversations in a low, anxious 
voice with Cousin Willy. 

J ane, seeing her mother’s hurt look, longed 
at times to throw herself in her arms and to 
cry that if only the cloud between them could 
be raised, she would accept any old man for a 


AND PLAIN JANE 59 

stepfather — even if he were a mixture of Nero 
and George the Third. But the thought of 
her own disappointment over the summer she 
had planned, and the remembrance of the three 
stepbrothers she would have to accept would 
always send her back into her shell and she 
would be colder and even more silent than be- 
fore. 

“ Jane,” said Cousin Willy one morning, 
“ your step — er, Mr. Watkins is going to be 
here this afternoon. Now, do try, for your 
mother’s sake to pull yourself together and to 
meet him like a civilized human being. We 
all have to shut the savage that is in our nature 
back into the wigwam at times. Now for 
goodness sake, try to shut your savage up tight ! 
And think of all the nice things that you are 
throwing away — why, those three stepbrothers 
would mean a lot to some girls.” 

“ But don’t you see,” cried Jane excitedly, 
her voice growing high and shrill, “ that it is 
just because of those dreadful boys that I can’t 
stand it? Oh, it’s bad enough to have your 
own mother perfectly willing to give you up 
for some awful man — to throw you aside and 
not care for you any more — but it’s worse to 


6o 


MARGERY MORRIS 


have her willing to throw you aside for three 
perfectly strange boys that have never been a 
thing to her ! Why, she talked about them all 
the time at first — ‘ the boys need a mother 
so/ she kept saying. She never seemed to 
think that her daughters need a mother, too. 
J ust because of that awful man and those awful 
boys she wants to go away to some awful old 
country house that belongs to them and to give 
up this dear little cottage and everything! ” 

“ You are being very absurd,” Cousin Willy 
said sharply. “ Now do try to fix yourself 
up — your hair looks like an owl in the ivy. 
And try to behave yourself when Mr. Watkins 
comes. You might do it so as not to mortify 
your mother.” 

At half-past two Jane heard a big luxurious 
automobile draw up at the gate, and a minute 
later a deep masculine voice booming in the 
little living-room below. 

As the clock on her desk struck three, she 
turned from her looking-glass and with white 
lips and a grim smile walked slowly out of her 
room and down the stairway. 

From the stairs she could see through the 
wide doorway into the living-room. She 


AND PLAIN JANE 61 

stopped and crouching down gazed at the big 
handsome man sitting by the window. From 
him her eyes wandered to her mother, a new 
mother, pink-cheeked and gay, with the happy, 
excited little air she had worn the day she had 
come home. As she crouched there staring 
at the strange big man who had come into her 
life to alter it, her mother looked up and, 
catching sight of her, called happily: 

“ Oh, Janey dear, come here! ” 

But with a cry of pain, Jane had dashed 
through the open door and was running toward 
the rocks. 

In a sheltered corner behind a great shoulder 
of rock, she stopped and, throwing herself 
down with her hands clasped about her ankles, 
laid her head on her drawn-up knees. 

On the beach below a group of happy chil- 
dren played. Jane could hear them shouting 
as the waves came in around the sand fort they 
had built. On the opposite point of rocks half 
a dozen boys and girls were diving off into 
deeper water. She could see them standing 
one moment, ready, poised, the next forming 
an arc through the air; and then, a splash. 
Now and then the wind brought their voices. 


62 


MARGERY MORRIS 


happy young voices, punctuated with bursts 
of laughter. Above, the gulls wheeled and 
called, and down on the beach a tiny gray 
sandpiper flitted before the incoming waves. 
In all that happy scene of sea and sky and 
shore, Jane felt herself to be the only miser- 
able and unhappy thing. 

But in the sheltered corner the sun shone 
warm and comforting, the sea wind laid cool 
fingers on her heated forehead and soothed her 
aching nerves. Jane had slept little of late, 
and she was worn out with grief and rebellion. 
Gradually, the shouts of the children, the 
laughter of the divers, the calls of the birds, 
joined with the sound of the waves in a lullaby, 
and Jane drifted off to sleep. 

In her dreams some one tender and com- 
passionate seemed to come to her, to slip a 
cushion under her heavy head and to spread a 
cloak over her thinly clad shoulders; some one 
who kissed her and called her Janey. 

When she woke her head was lying in her 
mother’s lap, and her mother was bending over 
her. J ane stared sleepily up, wondering what 
had happened. 

“ Wake up, dear,” her mother laughed. 


AND PLAIN JANE 63 

“ It’s supper time, and I want to talk to 
you.” 

Jane yawned. “What is it?” she asked 
sleepily. 

“ Mr. Watkins was here this afternoon, as 
you know, dear. He has gone for a little while 
to see his sister-in-law who has a cottage 
here, — but he will be back before long. He — 
he quite understands how you feel. But he 
wants to see you — he once had a little girl who 
died, and he wants to try to be to you what 
he was to that other little daughter. And he 
understands how you feel about the boys — if 
you think that you cannot accept them as 
brothers, you need not, Jane. You needn’t 
even meet them for a long, long time. But he 
wants to see you this afternoon — besides, dear, 
he has been ordered abroad on an important 
mission, and we shall have to be married 
sooner than we expected. Come, Jane, come.” 

But Jane only turned on her side and wept. 


CHAPTER V 


THE DANCE 

“ Cousin Willy — what do you suppose? 
I am going to a dance at the Yacht Club to- 
night! ” 

Cousin Willy looked up from the stocking 
she was darning. “ Do you dance well 
enough? ” she asked critically. 

With a flounce of indignation, Jane dropped 
into a chair. “ Oh, Cousin Willy,” she cried. 
“ I do wish that you wouldn’t always make me 
feel so good-for-nothing and cheap! You 
know that dancing is the one thing I really do 
well — you know we had a dancing class every 
Friday afternoon at school!” 

“ That’s so,” agreed Cousin Willy placidly. 
“ How does it happen that you are going to a 
dance? ” 

“ I met Mrs. Collins, that stout woman who 
was a friend of Aunt Jane’s, on the steps of 
64 


AND PLAIN JANE 65 

the post-office — and she asked me to go. 
They’re having a Fourth of July regatta and 
water-sports at the club to-day and it’s to end 
up with a dance to-night. I don’t want to go 
a bit,” J ane finished wearily, “ but I couldn’t 
get out of it.” 

Cousin Willy glanced at Jane’s pale face 
and put down her work. “ What are you go- 
ing to wear? ” she asked. 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” answered Jane indiffer- 
ently. “ My white net, I suppose — it’s all I’ve 
got.” 

“ I think that it’s lovely for you to go to 
the dance,” Cousin Willy announced with 
sudden enthusiasm. “And I saw the sweetest 
little blue crepe dress one day at such a bar- 
gain, so I bought it and put it aside — I think 
that perhaps it will just fit you.” 

She bustled out of the room, and with one 
foot drawn up under her, Jane sat listlessly 
hunched up in a big chair. Her mother had 
left the week before to stay with the friend at 
whose house she had been when she met Mr. 
Watkins. She was to be married from there 
and sail for Europe toward the middle of the 
month. Jane’s meeting with her stepfather 


66 


MARGERY MORRIS 


had been a brief and unsuccessful one, and she 
had steadfastly refused to see him again, or 
to meet, or even to mention, any of the others 
of her new connections. Marion had written, 
taking her to task for her attitude, and there 
had been a short and bitter correspondence be- 
tween the two sisters. Finally it had been de- 
cided that Cousin Willy would give up her pro- 
posed trip to Canada and that she and Jane 
would stay on together at Buttercup Cottage. 
The strain and unhappiness and the grief at 
parting with her mother had nearly made the 
girl ill, and Cousin Willy had felt more 
anxiety than she cared to show. 

“ Here’s the dress, Jane,” she said, coming 
back with a little blue frock over her arm. 
“ Try it on and see if it will do. I’m glad that 
you’re going out this evening — it will be good 
for you — you need more young people. Why, 
to-day’s the first time you’ve even gone to the 
post-office for an age. And it did worry your 
mother so to see you so pale and droopy.” 

Jane stared out of the window with eyes 
that could see nothing for tears, and suffered 
herself to be put into the blue frock. It was 
more successful than some of Cousin Willy’s 


AND PLAIN JANE 67 

bargains, and its soft color and picturesque cut 
were becoming. 

“ There — that will do very well — I’ll just 
take up the hem a little and fix this lace in the 
sleeve — and it will be very becoming. It was 
a very expensive dress — I just bought it be- 
cause it was so much reduced; although, of 
course, I never wear blue. Hasn’t Mrs. Col- 
lins a son? ” 

“ Yes — Barry. Aunt Jane always spoke of 
him as Snobby-boy, though, because he’s so 
funny and snobby. I’ve never met him but I 
know what he looks like — that little fat fellow 
with the sleek light hair and not much chin and 
high cheek bones, — you know, we often see him 
round. Can that lace come over this way 
more? ” 

“ Yes, I’ll fix it. Now go and take a nap, 
or you won’t be fit to be seen.” 

“All right — but I do wish I didn’t have to 
go. I know I won’t have a good time! — I’m 
nothing but old Plain Jane, anyway,” she 
finished to herself. 

When she woke from a long nap in the 
steamer chair on the side porch, J ane felt more 
cheerful than she had since the day she heard of 


68 


MARGERT MORRIS 


her mother’s marriage. Her sleep in the open 
air gave her a good color and it was a very 
pretty picture that the candles shone upon as 
she stood before the high old-fashioned bureau 
in her room and finished fastening the quaint 
high-waisted little blue dress that suited so well 
her fragile beauty. 

“ There,” said Cousin Willy, as they heard 
Mrs. Collins opening the front gate, “ I’m sure 
that you will look as well as anyone there.” 

Throwing her cape about her shoulders, 
Jane ran out to meet Mrs. Collins, a stout com- 
monplace woman, whose good nature did some- 
thing to make up for her lack of intelligence. 
As they started down the road to the village, 
Jane could see the club-house lights blazing 
from every window, and the long dark wharf « 
running out into the bay outlined with Japa- 
nese lanterns, and she could hear rollicking 
dance music. With the eager seeking of youth 
for life and romance Jane’s pulse quickened 
and she unconsciously hastened her footsteps 
until Mrs. Collins, puffing, suggested that 
there really was no need to hurry. 

“ I wonder if that Margery Morris will be 
here,” J ane thought as they went up the club- 


AND PLAIN JANE 69 

house steps. “ I haven’t seen her for an 
age.” 

The dance was for members, young, old, 
and in between ; but at the end of the long, hot 
and exciting day only the young had energy 
enough left to dance. The older people were 
clustered in groups on the veranda; the men 
smoking and the women chatting idly together, 
repeating stray bits of gossip and watching, 
through the long windows, the dancers with 
more or less critical interest. Here and there 
in quiet corners the determined card-players 
had their quiet game of bridge. 

When Mrs. Collins and Jane entered the 
dressing-room, they found a couple of tired 
and yawning women who lingered, their wraps 
on their arms, for a final word together. 
“ Well, I’m going straight to my bed,” declared 
one of them, backing toward the door. “ I’ve 
been on my feet since half-past nine this morn- 
ing, running this thing, and I certainly am 
tired — these French heels are the death of me. 
Mary is going to stay until the last horn blows, 
I suppose. She has had all her dances taken 
since yesterday. Oh, good-evening, Mrs. Col- 
lins.” 


MARGERY MORRIS 


70 

She paused to speak to Mrs. Collins, gave a 
swift appraising glance at Jane, decided that 
she was not in her daughter’s set, and nodded 
indifferently as Mrs. Collins mumbled Jane’s 
name. 

Flushing a little Jane handed her cloak to 
the maid and turned to the mirror. She found 
it monopolized by a pretty little hoyden a year 
or two older than herself, whose frock, where 
it had become torn, was being mended by her 
fat and fussy mother. 

“ Oh, mother, do hurry up,” exclaimed the 
girl impatiently, jerking her shoulder. “ It 
looks all right! I’ve got this dance engaged 
with that peachy friend of Katherine Endi- 
cott’s — and I’m missing most of it.” She 
broke away and with a whirl of skirts was out 
of the door. 

Jane, leaning forward and touching with 
fingers that trembled a little the hair over her 
ears, found herself listening with a sudden 
dread to the music that had sounded so gay 
and so romantic before. It seemed to foretell 
something that would hurt her. 

“Ready, Jane?” Mrs. Collins called from 
the door. “Mrs. Price says,” she added as they 


AND PLAIN JANE yi 

made their way through the erush in the cor- 
ridor to the ballroom, “ that a whole crowd 
of Yale boys who have been camping out over 
at Vinehaven came this morning for the races, 
and that her daughter and the other girls are 
having a wonderful time.” 

Jane scarcely heard her; the music had 
stopped and the dancers, laughing and talking, 
were surging out through the hall to the 
veranda and the lawn. With wide anxious 
eyes she was comparing her costume with the 
modish gowns about her. In the garish lights 
of the club-house, the little blue frock that had 
seemed so quaint and artistic in the candle-light 
of the cottage, suddenly appeared to her to be 
frumpish. 

Mrs. Collins sailed across the ballroom floor 
and took her place along the opposite wall with 
a congenial group of stout and gossiping 
matrons. Jane sat down beside her and 
waited. 

The music started again, a fox-trot that set 
her toes to tingling. The dancers came drift- 
ing back, and the floor grew thronged. Jane, 
watching, saw here and there the faces of sev- 
eral boys she remembered having met the sum- 


MARGERY MORRIS 


72 

mer before and who were evidently down from 
the city for the Fourth of July festivities. 
Would any of them recognize her, she won- 
dered, and come for the next dance? 

They danced on, apparently oblivious of the 
little figure in blue. 

“ Don’t you dance? ” asked one of Mrs. 
Collins’ friends, turning to Jane. 

Jane smiled, with a forced vivacity that had 
no relation to her usual rather slow smile. 
“ Oh, yes,” she said as composedly as she could. 
“ I dove to lance.” 

“ I beg pardon? ” 

Jane corrected herself. “ I love to dance.” 

“So does my daughter. There she is — that 
girl in the pink dress. I used to love to dance 
too, when I was a girl — my card was always 
full and running over.” 

The music stopped and again the dancers 
surged out to the veranda and the lawn. With 
a little sigh of relief, Jane sat up and straight- 
ened her shoulders. Expectantly she watched 
the doorway; some more or less familiar figure 
might appear and come in to ask her for the 
next dance. She caught sight of Mrs. Col- 
lins’ son bowing his sleek blond head before a 


AND PLAIN JANE 73 

dashing girl in brilliant scarlet. “ I wonder if 
I’ll have to dance with him,” she thought. 

Another dance began and Jane bravely set 
herself to watching the revolving couples; a 
tolerant and amused smile on her lips as one 
who amiably looks on the gambols of frolic- 
some puppies. Another dance followed, a fast 
and furious fox-trot, and Jane, beating time 
with slippered feet that could not keep still, 
felt her tolerant smile grow set. “ I feel like 
the boy during the long sermon,” she thought, 
her sense of humor triumphing for the moment. 
“ ‘ I don’t do nothin’, an’ I don’t say nothin’ — 
I jest set an’ set an’ set.’ ” 

That dance ended and the stout matrons 
talking to Mrs. Collins dragged themselves to 
their feet and departed to the pillows for which 
their weary heads were so visibly pining. Mrs. 
Collins, roused to her responsibilities by their 
departure, turned to Jane. 

“ Dear me, Jane, aren’t you dancing? ” 
Catching sight of her son she beckoned. 
“ There’s Barry,” she announced. “ He’ll 
dance with you.” 

Barry feigned not to see, and made a move 
toward the veranda. A pretty girl stopped 


MARGERY MORRIS 


74 

him, and introduced him to another girl, not 
quite so pretty. J ane saw him ask for dances, 
and with a little sense of satisfaction saw him 
refused, the girls holding up their full dance 
cards to him. As they left him, he turned and 
inadvertently caught his mother’s eye. She 
beckoned commandingly. He hesitated, evi- 
dently wondering whether he dared brave his 
mother’s displeasure and bolt. She beckoned 
again and unwillingly he made his way across 
the ballroom. 

“ Wha-d-y-want? ” he demanded. 

“ This is Jane Gale, Barry, and she hasn’t 
danced all evening. I do so want her to have 
a good time. I thought you — maybe ” 

Jane laid a protesting hand on her arm. 
“ Oh, no, Mrs. Collins,” she said miserably. 
“ I’d much rather not — I ” 

Barry bowed. “ I’m sorry,” he said, “ I 
have the next dance engaged.” His mother 
looked at him. “ But — er — I have the one 
after that,” he added hastily. “ May I have 
your card?” 

Jane had no card. 

“ It’s a card dance,” Barry explained with 
a man of the world air, “ er — I’ll get you one.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 75 

He disappeared and did not return until the 
dance for which he had committed himself. 

To Jane after her inactivity it was a delight 
to get out on the smooth, level floor with the 
orchestra playing her favorite one-step, to be 
whirled in and out among the other dancers, to 
be part of the whole merry dancing throng. 
At first she was unconscious of her partner, lost 
in the joy of dancing; but as she roused her- 
self and tried politely to make conversation, she 
realized anew his indifference and condescen- 
sion. Her shyness fell upon her, and she sud- 
denly remembered Cousin Willy’s warning, 
“ Do you dance well enough? ” Embarrassed, 
put out by her partner’s manner, she missed 
the step. “ Beg pardon,” apologized Barry, 
perfunctorily. “ We’d better try again.” 

They started off again, Barry holding her 
so that only the tips of her toes touched the 
floor and emphatically marking the time as 
though she were a clumsy child. They swung 
violently around a corner; Jane’s feet flew out, 
and again she missed the step. Barry stopped, 
counted, one, two, three, and they started off 
again. Nervous, indignant, Jane was close to 
tears when she spied, standing in the doorway, 


76 MARGERY MORRIS 

Mr. Burleigh, a middle-aged, popular bachelor 
who had been a friend of “Aunt Jane’s ” and 
who had known Mrs. Gale when she was a girl. 
As she j)assed him, Jane looked up at him, a 
glance so unconsciously wistful and beseech- 
ing that he held up his hand and motioned for 
the rest of the dance. Barry resigned her, and 
she fell into step with her new partner. 

“ Such a woebegone, imploring glance, 
Jane, I have never seen,” he laughed as he 
skilfully avoided a lumbering couple and 
piloted her into a quieter corner. “ I don’t 
blame you — I wouldn’t want to dance with that 
conceited young puppy either. Well, how 
goes it, little girl, are you having a good time 
this evening? I just dropped in for a moment 
to see how the dance was going.” 

Jane longed to throw herself on his mercy, 
to beg him to take her home, take her anywhere 
away from this dreadful ballroom. 

“ Oh, Mr. Burleigh, please,” she began, when 
he went on: 

“Well, Jane, I ought to be congratulating 
you on your stepfather — he’s one of the finest 
men I have ever known, and he’ll make your 
mother a very happy woman. It’s hard on 


AND PLAIN JANE 77 

you, of course, at first — the marriage of those 
closest to us always is. But you’ll be the 
happier for it after while. What do you think 
of those stepbrothers of yours? Haven’t 
met them yet? Well, that’s too bad — they’re 
attractive young chaps. They will spoil you 
to death — that’s the only trouble.” 

The music stopped, and Jane parted with 
this partner almost as thankfully as she had 
done with her other. 

The evening wore on and the floor grew 
more crowded. J ane, sitting beside Mrs. Col- 
lins, found herself almost resigned to her fate 
as a wall-flower. All that she asked was not 
to have to dance again with Barry Collins, or 
to hear Mr. Burleigh talk about her step- 
father. Suddenly, through the crowd she 
caught sight of Margery Morris’s blond curls 
and delicate profile. Margery was dancing 
with a tall, red-haired, wiry boy who had re- 
markably agile legs, and whose long upper lip, 
and turned-up nose seemed fairly to radiate 
fun. She seemed to find him highly amusing, 
and Jane watching her, so confident, so happy, 
so at ease, felt that she must almost belong to 
some different race of beings. 


78 MARGERY MORRIS 

“ Don’t feel that you must sit by me, 
Jane,” remarked Mrs. Collins, somewhat 
superfluously. “ I want you to have a good 
time, you know.” 

“ I — I like to watch,” faltered Jane. 

Margery and her partner danced past her 
again, and she knew that they spoke of her. 
“ They’re making fun of me because I’m a 
wall-flower,” she thought bitterly. “But after 
all, what does just a dance matter, when I’m 
so unhappy, anyway? ” 

Out of her misery grew the sudden resolve 
to take up her art seriously, and to become a 
great portrait painter. To comfort herself she 
fell to dreaming of the days when she should be 
famous and when some of the boys here to- 
night, grown to be men, should come to her 
to have their portraits painted, and of the scorn 
with which she would dismiss them. When she 
was celebrated and rich and courted she would 
go abroad and be entertained at great English 
country houses and famous French chateaux. 
She saw herself, radiant in scarlet velvet, 
sweeping into an opera box, while from a 
humble place in the audience, Barry watched 
her, stunned. 


AND PLAIN JANE 79 

“ Don’t feel that you must stick by me, 
Jane,” Mrs. Collins’ voice brought her back 
from her dreams. Jane raised her eyes from 
her lap and her glance fell on Barry himself, 
dancing with a tall ungainly girl upon whom 
he would never have wasted his attentions had 
she not been reputed to be phenomenally rich. 
Barry at the best of times was not a graceful 
dancer; just now he was absurd. With his 
head apparently butted into his tall partner’s 
chest, he kicked his heels out wildly behind 
him, as he whirled his way down the ballroom 
floor. Jane, who always enjoyed the absurd, 
bit her lips as she watched him. Others were 
watching him too, and as Margery and her 
partner caught Jane’s glance they burst into 
peals of laughter and nodded as if to share the 
joke with her. The music ended once more 
and Jane leaned back; she felt comforted some- 
how by the little incident, and the friendly nod 
of the two young people made her feel less for- 
lorn and friendless. 

“ Why, there’s Mrs. Endicott,” fluttered 
Mrs. Collins. 

Jane looked up; crossing the floor toward 
them was the graceful, elegant woman she re- 


8o 


MARGERT MORRIS 


membered having seen the day her mother’s 
letter came, and hanging on her arm was Mar- 
gery Morris. 

“ Good-evening, Mrs. Collins,” smiled Mrs. 
Endicott, “ and good-evening, Jane. This is 
Jane Gale, I know,” she said as Jane looked 
up surprised. “ I used to know your mother 
very well, dear, when she and I were about 
your age. And this is my young friend, Mar- 
gery Morris, who is very anxious to meet you 
officially. She says that she has talked to you 
several times. Now, dear, I will sit here and 
talk to Mrs. Collins, while you two girls run 
off and have a good time.” 

Before she knew what happened, Jane 
found herself being piloted across the floor to- 
ward a long window that opened on to the 
veranda. 

“ I’m so glad that you’re here to-night,” 
chattered Margery volubly. “ I haven’t seen 
you around lately and I was afraid that you 
had gone away. I’ve got a million boys on 
my hands to-night. That’s an exaggeration — 
I’m trying to learn not to exaggerate — I mean 
that I have got five boys to look after. Three 
friends of Perry’s and Jack’s — they’re Mrs. 


AND PLAIN JANE 81 

Endicott’s nephews — came down for the day. 
There are few girls of our ages here to-night — 
they’re all older. Katherine Endicott dances 
with our boys a little, but she scorns anything 
that isn’t at least a college senior — schoolboys 
are beneath her! Boys,” to a group of lads 
standing in a corner of the long veranda, “just 
see what I’ve brought you! This is Miss 
Gale.” 

Breathlessly, Jane murmured something as 
the boys crowded round her, and there were 
rapid introductions. She was too embarrassed 
and dazed to be conscious of the names that 
Margery announced, or even to reply when the 
biggest of the boys asked for the next dance. 

“You know you owe me one,” he laughed, 
“ to prove that you’ve forgiven me for nearly 
running over you that day.” 

“ That’s not fair, Perry,” interrupted the 
red-haired boy Jane had noticed dancing with 
Margery. “ I was going to ask for this dance. 
That’s the worst of these elder brothers, Miss 
Hale, they’re always butting in.” 

Margery turned from the little group of 
boys about her and took command of the situa- 
tion. “ Jane will have to have a card, Jack — 


82 


MARGERY MORRIS 


give me a piece of paper, somebody,” she or- 
dered. “ There,” as a torn envelope was fished 
from the pocket of one of the boys, “ this will 
do. Step up, children, and engage your 
dances.” 

“All right,” acquiesced Jack, “ second half 
of this first dance for me, Miss Hale.” 

“ My name isn’t Hale,” protested Jane 
faintly, “ it’s Gale.” But she was already be- 
ing swept off for the first dance by Perry, 
and nobody heard her. 

Once more Jane found herself on the ball- 
room floor. But this time was different ! Her 
big, handsome, young partner neither appeared 
to be disdainful of quiet Jane, nor asked her 
distressing questions about her new stepfather 
and brothers. He danced easily and well, 
guiding her deftly around the crowded floor, 
and seemed content just to enjoy the music 
and the dancing without too much talking — 
which J ane deeply appreciated, as making con- 
versation would have been too much for her. 

When her partner handed her over to his 
brother she was apprehensive; of course this 
lively boy would say witty things and expect 
her to make clever answers. But Jack, she 



I NEVER KNEW ANYBODY COULD HAVE SUCH A GOOD TIME” 































































AND PLAIN JANE 83 

found, was quite capable of doing all the talk- 
ing himself. His running fire of quips and 
jokes and ridiculous comments on the other 
dancers required no answer beyond the 
laughter with which J ane, who honestly 
thought him the most amusing person she had 
ever met, greeted his sallies. Finding that 
Jane danced well, he insisted on inventing new 
steps, and under his guidance they pranced and 
capered and flew, bounded and pirouetted with 
unflagging enthusiasm until the music stopped. 

“ I never knew that anybody could have 
such a good time,” sighed Jane as she and 
Margery perched together on the veranda rail 
while the boys went to get them some ice- 
cream. 

“ Yes, isn’t it fun? ” cried Margery enthusi- 
astically. “ I’m so glad you’re here, so that 
we can enjoy it together.” 

Jane looked at her as she sat with her face 
turned toward the sea, the moonlight stream- 
ing down on her curls and her filmy white dress 
and scarf, and she wondered whimsically if 
Margery were not some sort of little Christ- 
mas-tree fairy who had flown in and perched 
on the porch railing. From the conversation 


MARGERY MORRIS 


84 

of the other girls at school she knew how few 
girls so unselfishly share their dancing part- 
ners. 

“ There come the boys,” said Margery. 
“ Jack ahead with two plates of ice-cream. 
Did you ever see anybody so killing — espe- 
cially when he dances? ” 

Delighted with Jane’s skilful following of 
even his wildest inventions in dancing steps 
and her cordial appreciation of his jokes, Jack 
clamored for more dances as the music began 
again and was finally elbowed unceremoniously 
out of the way by his brother and another of 
the boys. 

The evening grew more and more wonderful 
to Jane. She had known very few boys in her 
quiet life, and those few had unfortunately 
been of the Barry Collins order; boys who 
showed by their disconcertingly wandering eye 
and indifferent manner how they regarded a 
little mouse like Jane. But these new ac- 
quaintances, with their polite and natural man- 
ners and their evident intention to make them- 
selves agreeable, were different and seemed to 
her nothing short of marvellous. Under the 
stimulus of their pleasant society, she bios- 


AND PLAIN JANE 85 

somed forth, and with Margery at hand to help 
her, managed to laugh and talk as though she 
had never known what it meant to be timid and 
shy. Even when her tongue tripped her up 
and she twisted her words, she was only slightly 
embarrassed, and joined in the laughter as un- 
concernedly as the others when she found that 
she had been talking at length of the “ boy 
trout scoop ” instead of the boy scout troop. 

“ It seems to me we have the jolliest crowd 
here to-night,” remarked Perry, as, attracted 
by the fun, other boys began to join them. 

“We can’t complain of lack of partners,” 
laughed Margery, holding up a card black 
with names; “ some of Katherine’s young men 
have actually condescended to ask for dances. 
Jack, if this keeps on we will have to dress you 
up in one of Aunt Kate’s gowns. You’d make 
such a sweet girl, and you could dance with the 
poor desolated youths that Jane is turning 
down.” 

As she spoke Margery waved her hand in 
the direction of Barry Collins, who perceiving 
that Jane had become suddenly popular and 
the center of a worth-while group had duly pre- 
sented himself. Perhaps the crowning mo- 


86 


MARGERY MORRIS 


ment of the evening to Jane was when she was 
able to show him her full dance card. 

At last the yawning musicians began to pack 
their instruments, and one by one the lights of 
the club-house were extinguished. 

“ Oh, dear, I’m so sorry it’s over,” cried 
Jane, her eyes shining and her cheeks still 
scarlet, as she went down the steps with Mrs. 
Collins. “ I believe I could dance all night ! ” 
“ So could I,” answered Jack. “ Next time 
we’ll do those fancy steps and give the others 
something to think about. Don’t forget, Miss 
Hale.” 

“ Her name isn’t Hale, you boob,” exclaimed 
his brother, as Jane and Mrs. Collins moved 
off. “ It’s Gale— Jane Gale! ” 

Jack stared at Perry in open-mouthed aston- 
ishment. “That Jane Gale!” he exclaimed. 
“ Great Scott! ” 


CHAPTER VI 


“ OH YES, OF COURSE! ” 

“ Grandpapa/’ said Margery the morning 
after the dance, “ that Gale girl is ever so nice 
— if you don’t mind, I think that after I’ve 
gotten off my letter to mamma — and one to 
Polly — I’ll walk down the road and see if she 
is about. Perhaps she might go with us this 
afternoon if we motor down to Vinehaven.” 

Mr. Morris glanced up from his paper. 
“ Hmm, yes,” he said absently. “ Get it if you 
want it, child, and tell them to send the bill to 
me,” and resumed reading an absorbing article 
on the tariff. 

Margery laughed. “ You’re getting rash, 
grandpapa,” she teased. “ Suppose I had 
wanted a steam yacht, instead of just one girl 
for an afternoon’s ride? ” 

“ Um — what? — yes, dear,” answered her 
grandfather, still absorbed. 

87 


88 


MARGERT MORRIS 


Smiling, Margery perched cross-legged on 
the wide stone ledge of the veranda balus- 
trade, and spreading open her leather writing- 
case on her knee, began her letters. The sun- 
shine fell on her uncovered head and the sea- 
wind stirred the little curls clustering about her 
face; now and then she paused in her writing to 
exult in the sunshine and salt air, or to enjoy 
the ruby red of the geraniums in the stone 
vases against the brilliant blue of the summer 
sky, and to listen to the gentle gluck-gluck of 
the waves on the rocks below. 

“ Oh, Polly,” she wrote, “ I am so crazy for 
you and Esther to get here ! This glorious air 
makes us feel so well, and everything is so per- 
fect. We were ever so lucky in getting this 
cottage, too. It’s all white, and rambling, and 
flower-hidden outside, and all big rooms and 
low ceilings and funny nooks and queer artistic 
furniture inside. And the veranda sprawls 
right out over the rocks so that there’s a drop 
down into the bay and the vines from the 
flower-boxes hang down over the brown rocks. 
The veranda will be a perfect place for 
parties.” 

Her letters finished, Margery ran up the 


AND PLAIN JANE 89 

stairs to her room, where she paused to look 
out of her window across the sparkling blue 
water of the bay to the great sand-dunes. 
“ Oh, it’s going to be such a perfect summer,” 
she exulted, as poor Jane had done. Her close 
friends, Polly Jameson and Esther Crowell, 
were to pay her a long visit, and Sam Bennet’s 
family were going to be at a hotel in Win- 
chester. To the delight of all the young peo- 
ple, Dick Ball’s grandfather had actually con- 
sented to Dick’s joining Sam and spending a 
month with him. And now that Perry and 
Jack had unexpectedly come to spend the 
summer with Mrs. Endicott, who was their own 
aunt and Margery’s by adoption, the prospects 
for the summer seemed of the liveliest. Mar- 
gery, too, had taken a fancy to Jane, and hoped 
that she would add one more to their number. 

“ I wonder who she is,” she thought, cross- 
ing to the other window, where her newly 
whitened sports shoes were drying in the sun- 
shine. “ Her name seems familiar, somehow, 
and Aunt Kate seemed rather mysterious and 
queer about her. I wish I had had a chance 
last night to ask her about Jane — I’ll do it 
when we go over there this evening.” 


MARGERY MORRIS 


90 

She leaned far out of the window to watch a 
sailing vessel disappear into the horizon. 

“ How perfect it looks out there — doesn’t it, 
Sarah? ” she remarked to the maid who had 
just come in with an armload of clean clothes. 
“ .Wouldn’t it be fun out there in a dear little 
sailboat, bobbing up and down over the 
waves ! ” 

“ Goodness, no, Miss Margery,” declared 
Sarah with a shudder. “ It’s just thim horrid 
cruel waves that makes me stay awake at night 
thinkin’ about thim. Oh, it’s many a prayer I 
sez to the saints that we’ll all git home safely 
back to Renwyck’s Town. Don’t you try 
goin’ out in any of thim little boats ! — it’s good 
an’ seasick ye’d be, anyway,” she comforted 
herself. 

“ Now, Sarah,” teased Margery, sitting 
down on the floor to change her shoes, “ just 
think what a nice mermaid I’d be if I happened 
to get up-dumped out of one of those boats ! ” 

“ It’s ill jestin’ about serious matters, Miss 
Margery,” reproved Sarah. “ If you’re goin’ 
out you might stop at that Ashman’s and hustle 
him up. I asked him when he’d deliver thim 
clams I ordered fer lunch, an’ he said he’d do it 


AND PLAIN JANE 91 

when he 4 got round to it.’ That’s the way 
with all these here New England people — 
they’re so independent, and they’ll just do 
things whin they ‘ git round to it.’ 4 Round 
to it? ’ I sez to him. 4 I’ll git round to you if 
you don’t have thim clams here by lunch 
time,’ ” and Sarah poked her broom under the 
bureau as though she were sweeping out the 
whole tribe of New England fish-dealers. 

44 Any other errands? ” asked Margery as she 
put her letters into the pocket of her white 
linen skirt. 44 I’ll be back by luncheon — maybe 
before,” she added with a laugh, 44 in case this 
Jane Gale is cold to me.” 

Her letters dropped in the slot at the post- 
office, and a friendly chat with the postmistress 
indulged in, she stopped at the Ashman’s and 
impressed upon him Sarah’s displeasure were 
the clams not forthcoming by lunch time. 
Then free, she turned her feet in the direction 
of Buttercup Cottage. The old village street 
with its little white houses and its big elms 
enchanted her, as did the cottage gardens. 
44 Oh, won’t Polly love it,” she thought, 44 and 
as for mamma! — she’ll be so enthusiastic she 
won’t be able to speak.” And Margery’s face 


MARGERY MORRIS 


92 

grew radiant as she thought of the home-com- 
ing of the lovely young mother who had been 
far away in Japan for so many long months. 

A yellow rose beckoned to her from the other 
side of a low white picket-fence. Margery, 
who loved roses, stopped and looked at it and 
at the little white house in the tiny dooryard of 
which it grew. 

“ That’s a beautiful rose,” she thought. “ I 
wonder what it is called — and if it is as fragrant 
as it looks. We must get some like it at the 
White House farm.” 

She looked up and down the street ; nothing 
living was in sight except a solitary cat stalk- 
ing across the street. Putting her hands on 
the fence she leaned far over and buried her 
nose in the golden heart of the flower. 

“ You there! What are you doing? ” came 
a harsh voice above her head. Startled, Mar- 
gery almost lost her balance and for an in- 
stant came close to pitching forward on her 
head. After what seemed to her an eternity 
she regained her feet and raised her crimson 
face to the upper window of the house where a 
severe, middle-aged woman stood watching her. 

“ You summer boarders are too fresh,” said 


AND PLAIN JANE 93 

the woman angrily. “ You stalk about the 
village as though you owned the whole place. 
But I can tell you, stealing my roses is going 
just about too far.” 

44 1 — I wasn’t stealing your rose — I — I was 
just smelling it.” 

“ That’s very likely,” snapped the woman. 

Angry and embarrassed, Margery turned on 
her heel and went on her way, “ stalking ” like 
the boarders the woman had objected to. The 
cat trotted a foot or two ahead of her. 

Suddenly the absurdity of the situation over- 
came her, and she burst out laughing so un- 
expectedly that the startled cat backed off and 
spat at her. With that she became limp with 
laughter and she was still smiling when she 
passed her grandfather’s house and followed 
along the path that led to Buttercup Cottage. 

“ It’s such a dear funny little place,” she 
thought as she came near it. 44 Polly will love 
this, too. Oh, there’s somebody sketching by 
the pine — I wonder if it’s Jane. Oh dear,” as 
she caught sight of a tall boy leaning over the 
low stone wall and heard him call something to 
the girl under the tree. 44 That’s J ack.” 

Margery had no objections to Jack on gen- 


MARGERY MORRIS 


94 

eral principles; in fact, she considered him an 
altogether presentable and charming person, 
with the added advantage of being Mrs. Endi- 
cott’s nephew; but she felt that the scatter- 
brained boy would be decidedly in the way 
when she was trying to engineer a better ac- 
quaintance with this shy girl. 

Suddenly, Margery herself grew almost 
shy ; and lingering by the wall, discovered that 
her shoe needed tying, retied it ; watched a sea- 
gull and a distant sailboat, and at last was 
about to go on to the beach. At that moment 
Jack looked up, recognized her and waved. 
Margery waved back with desperate cordiality 
and called to Jane, “ How are you after the 
dance? ” 

Jane did not understand, and Margery 
called again : 

“ How are you after the dance? ” 

Still Jane did not understand, and Margery, 
wishing that she had never undertaken to ask 
the question, screamed once more, “ How are 
you after the dance? ” 

Jack came forward. “ Better come in, Mar- 
gery,” he said, holding out his hand to help her 
over the wall. “ We were just speaking of 


AND PLAIN JANE 95 

your ladyship when you arrived on the 
scene.” 

Jane, confused, came forward, held out her 
hand, and abruptly drew it back. “ I’m afraid 
that it’s painty,” she explained with a shy 
laugh. “ I — I was just painting.” 

“ Oh, how perfect,” exclaimed Margery as 
her eyes fell on the sketch on the easel. “ Did 
you do that? It’s awfully nice and decorative, 
isn’t it? I wish I could paint — I can’t do a 
thing but sing and play a little. Polly Jame- 
son, the girl who is going to visit me later on, 
is terribly bright. But I’m afraid that we are 
interrupting you.” 

“ I’m afraid that we are,” agreed Jack, with- 
out evincing any compunction. “ I came along 
and saw the painting fest going on — so I yelled 
and asked if I might come in.” 

Jane laughed again, shyly. “ I’m very glad 
to see you both,” she faltered. 

“ I had better luck here in looking over the 
fence than I did a little while ago,” said Mar- 
gery, seeing that Jane was embarrassed and 
kindly taking the burden of the conversation. 
“ I was so mad! ” 

She went on with the story of her adventure 


MARGERY MORRIS 


96 

of the rose, and Margery, who never suffered 
from self-consciousness herself, was so funny 
in her indignation at the woman’s rudeness that 
Jane and Jack thoroughly enjoyed it. Then 
Jack remembered a ridiculous adventure of his 
own, and Jane even added a shy story which 
she managed to tell without undue twisting of 
her words. Margery, sitting on the rock with 
her hands folded in her lap, glanced at Jane 
on her little camp-stool before the easel, her 
palette on her left arm, and at Jack stretched 
out beside her on the grass and thought what 
an attractive little group they made. “ I wish 
that Polly were here to see them,” she thought, 
her eyes admiringly on Jane’s dark hair and 
her long blue painting smock. “ She’d put 
them into a story.” 

“ Hello,” said a voice back of them. Cer- 
tain that his presence could never be undesired, 
Barry Collins had not lingered by the wall 
waiting for a semi-invitation, but had opened 
the gate and come in. Having seen Jane so 
popular the night before he had felt that it 
might be worth his while to call this morning. 

J ack raised his eyebrows and drew back with 
something of the air of a dog meeting another 


AND PLAIN JANE 97 

strange and rather doubtful canine. He had 
not been impressed the night before by Barry. 
Margery felt frankly bored; she wanted to talk 
to this nice girl without a “ whole lot of boys 
underfoot.” 

“ I’m sorry, but I really must be going,” she 
said, rising after Barry had regaled them with 
gossip of the night before: that Miss Brown’s 
gown had been imported and had cost three 
hundred dollars and that Mr. Robinson had 
eaten six plates of ice-cream. “ If I’m late for 
luncheon Sarah will have a worse opinion of 
me than she had of the fishman — and that’s 
saying something. Sure you can’t go with us 
this afternoon? ” 

Jack got up to accompany her. With her 
eyes, Jane implored them to stay and not 
leave her to the society of Barry, but Margery 
was firm. 

“ Isn’t Jane sweet? ” she remarked to Jack 
as they walked together down the path over 
the rocks. “ I’m so sorry she can’t go with 
grandpapa and me to Vinehaven this after- 
noon. Yes, she certainly is sweet.” 

Jack made a dive with his cap after a butter- 
fly, missed it and almost fell. “ Sure,” he 


MARGERT MORRIS 


98 

agreed, restoring himself to the perpendicular. 
“ Do you know who she is? ” he added after a 
moment’s silence. 

“ Why, yes, of course — her name is Gale — 
Jane Gale.” 

“ Yes, but who else is she? ” 

“ Why I don’t know,” answered Margery, 
surprised. 

“ Think,” insisted Jack. 

“ Aunt Kate said her name is Jane — Jane 
Gale.” 

“ You are slow,” remarked Jack with flatter- 
ing frankness. “Think a minute — Jane 
Gale! ” 

“Why? I don’t see Oh! Oh, yes! 

Oh, of course! You mean she’s that Mrs. 
Gale’s daughter? I never thought! Of 
course — I might have known! Oh, Jack! ” 


CHAPTER VII 


AT THE KOPPER-KETTLE 

Jane was relieved when Barry took his de- 
parture and she could go on with her painting. 
But the light had changed and she found that 
her morning’s enthusiasm for work had faded, 
so by and by her hands dropped into her lap 
and she sat dreaming. 

“ I wonder if that Margery Morris will let 
me paint her sometime,” she thought. “ I 
wish I could ask her. Think of me with two 
boys and a strange girl calling on me all in one 
morning! How mother and Marion would 
laugh.” 

Her eyes filled with tears as she thought of 
her mother, and she could scarcely see her 
painting things as she gathered them together 
and went into the house. 

“ Who was that out there with you? ” asked 
Cousin Willy. “ I thought I saw Barry Col- 
lins.” 


99 


IOO 


MARGERT MORRIS 


“Yes, he was here, and that Margery Mor- 
ris I told you about meeting at the dance last 
night — that pretty girl. And then there was 
a boy I met last night too — I didn’t catch his 
name. There were such a lot of boys and I 
got them all mixed up. Anyway, he said his 
aunt, Mrs. Endicott, has a cottage here for the 
summer. So I suppose he’ll be here for some 
time.” 

Cousin Willy looked surprised. “A nephew 
of Mrs. Endicott’s? ” she repeated. “ Why! ” 
She stopped abruptly, suddenly absorbed in 
capturing a big fly that buzzed about the win- 
dow. “Are you going to the class to-day? ” 

“ Yes — this afternoon. Margery Morris 
wanted me to go motoring, but of course I 
couldn’t.” 

“You can have that big blue hat I bought at 
Marshall’s. It will suit you better than it does 
me — I only bought it because it was reduced, 
anyway.” 

When she tried it on that afternoon and 
started off for Winchester, Jane secretly 
thought that the big girlish hat did suit her 
better than it did Cousin Willy. Its artistic 
lines and vivid color were very becoming to 


AND PLAIN JANE ioi 

Jane and she felt quite pleased with her ap- 
pearance as she stood waiting for the car un- 
der the big ehn by the old Civil War veteran’s 
tiny shop. In spite of herself she felt rather 
interested in life; Margery and Jack seemed 
to suggest pleasant possibilities, and they had 
taken her thoughts from herself and her un- 
happiness. 

Just as the car came in sight Mrs. Collins 
came puffing up the hill. She was quite spent 
for breath and Jane and the conductor had to 
help her aboard. 

“Well, Jane!” she panted as soon as she 
was able to speak. “ I — haven’t seen — you — 
since — the dance last night. Hope you en- 
joyed — yourself. Dear me, I oughtn’t — to at- 
tempt to run — up the hill at my age. It’s bad 
for the heart! ” 

Jane murmured something inarticulate and 
sympathetic, and Mrs. Collins panted on. “ It 
was all — that stupid Lizzie’s fault. I said to 
her, ‘ Lizzie, I’m going to take a little nap — 
call me at half-past two,’ and she said, ‘ Yes, 
ma’am.’ And then, she didn’t call me until 
twenty-five minutes of three! Really, she de- 
serves to lose her place! Well, Jane, Barry 


102 


MARGERY MORRIS 


tells me you and your stepbrothers are great 
friends already. He says he met one of them 
at your house this morning.” 

“ My stepbrothers? ” 

“ Yes, your stepbrothers.” 

“But, my stepbrothers? Why? How?” 
asked Jane, still looking blank. 

“ Yes, your stepbrothers, the Watkins boys. 
Barry said he met Jack Watkins at your house 
this morning. He said it was a funny thing, 
too, but he didn't know that they were your 
stepbrothers until after he had left you. 
Somebody told him at the post-office.” 

Jane put out her hand blindly, and touched 
Mrs. Collins. “ My stepbrothers,” she re- 
peated vaguely. 

“ Why, yes, Jane,” replied Mrs. Collins, 
rather impatiently, “ your stepbrothers. 
What's the matter? — you look so funny. I 
suppose it isn’t a very pleasant subject to 
you — talking about your mother’s marriage, 
but I'm glad to see you taking it so sensibly 
and making friends with your steps. Barry 
seems to be quite taken with that Morris girl — • 
she’s some connection of Mrs. Endicott, I 
think. I’ll have to have you all over some 


AND PLAIN JANE 103 

evening for a little party. I like to entertain 
for Barry’s friends. I’m not like some 
mothers — glad to have their sons out of the 
house.” 

Mrs. Collins rambled on, beginning every 
sentence with the words “ I ” or “ Barry,” 
while Jane sat silent, absorbed in her own af- 
fairs. She felt desperately that she must con- 
ceal her amazement over the facts that Mrs. 
Collins had just disclosed. If she did not it 
would be repeated to Barry, she knew, and 
Barry would find it social capital and tell it as 
an amusing story everywhere in Wyanoke. 

But underneath the calm manner with which 
she apparently listened to Mrs. Collins, Jane 
was hurt and angry. Her young dignity re- 
sented bitterly what she considered the in- 
trusiveness of her stepbrothers. “ They 
know how I feel about them,” she thought in- 
dignantly. “And the idea of their coming to 
Wyanoke this way ! It shows that they haven’t 
a particle of delicacy or sensitiveness.” 

Beyond her indignation she had the il- 
logical — but perhaps not unnatural — feeling 
that the boys, in proving to be her step- 
brothers — had cheated her out of the prospect 


MARGERT MORRIS 


104 

of a delightful friendship. She had known so 
few boys in her quiet life; and these well-bred 
pleasant boys had been something of a revela- 
tion to her. And now to think that Perry with 
his dark good looks, and lively and amusing 
Jack were her detested stepbrothers! 

The model was posed and the class had begun 
when Jane arrived, her eyes wide and dark and 
her face white. The instructor glanced at her 
keenly, as without replying to the smile and 
nod of the gray-haired woman beside her, she 
tore off the big blue hat, and tossing it to the 
ground began with trembling fingers to open 
up her painting-box. The class was rather 
evenly divided; part of it middle-aged, some- 
what inefficient, workers who added interest to 
themselves in their summer outings by joining 
an art class and playing at painting, and the 
rest a few really talented boys and girls, stu- 
dents in the winter at the various art schools of 
the big cities. Jane, who did not belong to 
either group, usually selected a place beside 
some one of the middle-aged ladies as being the 
most soothing. Mr. Hodge, the instructor of 
the class, a tall thin nervous man, an artist to 
his finger tips, bore with the good ladies with 


AND PLAIN JANE 105 

a mixture of ironic patience and frantic de- 
spair, and found his consolation in the talented 
minority. Jane, although her work did not 
please him, aroused his interest in her appeal- 
ing personality, and he gave her a good deal of 
his attention, more so in fact than some of the 
more talented pupils thought to be quite fair. 
To-day, seeing that she was overwrought, he 
did not go near her easel, although from a dis- 
tance he glanced rather quizzically at the few 
chicken tracks that he could see she had drawn 
with charcoal on her canvas. Unconscious that 
she was being watched, Jane let her hands fall 
listlessly into her lap with her favorite gesture 
when weary or out of sorts, and sat staring at 
the model with eyes that saw nothing. Those 
awful boys, ran her thoughts, to follow her to 
Wyanoke, and to finish spoiling her already 
ruined summer! 

The woman next to Jane leaned over. 
“ Let’s see what you are doing,” she said af- 
fably. “ It’s always so interesting to see other 
people’s work.” 

Jane looked at her vaguely. 

“ Why, you’ve done nothing,” the other ex- 
claimed. “ Mr. Hodge won’t like that! ” 


106 MARGERY MORRIS 

Her pale cheeks suddenly flushing scarlet, 
Jane made a lunge at her hat, and jammed it 
on the wrong way about. With a murmured 
“ I’m not feeling well,” she bundled her paint- 
ing things back into their box, and before any- 
one realized quite what had happened, she had 
fled. 

Out in the quaint old narrow streets of Win- 
chester she wandered aimlessly about; hating, 
on account of the explanations she would have 
to make to Cousin Willy, to go back to 
Wyanoke before the usual time. Now and 
then passers-by, noting her hat so plainly on the 
wrong way about, and her intense expression, 
glanced at her with amusement or curiosity. 
But Jane, absorbed in her own thoughts, was 
unconscious. 

At last, remembering that she had promised 
to stop at the “ Kopper-Kettle,” the little tea- 
house near the trolley terminus, and buy some 
cake for supper, she decided to fill in the time 
there. She would order a cup of tea, or an 
ice perhaps, and linger over it as long as 
possible. 

She entered the tea-room and went to the 
little glass case where the cakes were displayed. 


AND PLAIN JANE 107 

There was no one about, and after Jane had 
walked heavily up and down the little shop, 
coughed so loudly that her throat rebelled, and 
rattled the sugar shaker lying on the counter, 
she decided to go down the long passageway 
that led to the enclosed porch looking out on 
the sea, where the tables were set. She thought 
that she heard voices there. The vine-sheltered 
porch, a pretty place with its white tables and 
chairs and the copper bowls filled with early 
nasturtiums, had grown to be popular and it 
seemed to be very crowded to Jane as she shyly 
slipped into a chair in a corner and looked 
about for a waitress. 

“ Oh, J ane,” cried a gay young voice, “ won’t 
you come and have tea with us? ” 

Jane started and turned. Margery, seated 
with a group at the next table, was smiling and 
beckoning. 

“ Do come,” cried Margery again. 

Jane half rose; then her confused glance 
fell on the others of the group. There was 
Jack smiling at her, and his brother Perry, 
and beside them, pretty Katherine Endi- 
cott. 

“ Oh,” Jane gasped. “ Oh! ” and springing 


108 MARGERY MORRIS 

to her feet she fled from the porch as she had 
already done from the art class. 

The screen door banged behind her, and the 
little group by the tea-table stared at one an- 
other in bewilderment. 

“ Why,” cried Margery indignantly. “ She 

cut me dead! I ” she stopped, her cheeks 

crimson. 

J ack clasped his red head in a dramatic por- 
trayal of grief. “ Bejabbers! ” he cried. 
“And I called on the lady this very morning 
and thought that I had made such a hit! 
Blighted! Blighted! Me fond hopes is 
blighted! ” 

“ Shut up, Jack,” ordered his brother 
sternly, conscious of the interested glances of 
some of the other visitors to the tea-house. 
“ It isn’t you, Margery,” he went on quietly. 
“ I’m sure that she has nothing against you. 
It’s probably Jack and me. She objects to us 
even worse than she does to father. You see, 
Margery, we’ve been keeping it dark — but 
you’re practically so much one of the family 
that we may as well tell you — father was par- 
ticularly anxious that we should be here this 
summer with Aunt Kate because of Jane. He 


AND PLAIN JANE 109 

thought that perhaps if we got to know her 
casually and naturally, some of her feeling 
against us might wear off. And we were to 
try to win the lady over, so to speak. It was 
through Jane’s mother that Aunt Kate heard 
of Wyanoke, and everything seemed to fit in 
well with the plan. 

“ But bother the girl — why can’t she take 
the thing sensibly? It’s just as hard on us to 
have father marry again as it is for her to have 
her mother marry. But we can’t help it, and 
the only thing to do is to make the best of it.” 

“ But Perry,” said Margery, “ she was all 
right at the dance — why, she danced lots with 
you and Jack. You know she did! Amd she 
was perfectly polite to Jack this morning.” 

“ Partners at a dance aren’t to be despised — 
even if they are stepbrothers,” remarked 
Katherine. “And I suppose she really couldn’t 
be rude to Jack in her own house. But per- 
sonally,” dropping a lump of sugar into her 
tea, “ I can’t quite see that my new step-cousin 
is worth the bothering about. It seems to me 
that it is very bad taste to make things so un- 
pleasant.” 

Margery absently selected a cake, too ab- 


I IO 


MARGERY MORRIS 


sorbed to notice that she had picked out one 
covered with caraway seeds. “ Sometimes it 
is awfully hard to see things straight. I re- 
member when I simply couldn’t see it straight 
about coming East to grandpapa. Jane seems 
awfully sweet to me — perhaps after a while she 
will get to feeling better and come to her 
senses.” 

“ It’s to be hoped so,” commented Perry. 

“And you know, really, Perry,” Margery 
went on, “ I do feel sorry for Jane. It is 
hard for her to have her mother get married 
so suddenly. Aunt Kate said that every- 
body else knew that Mrs. Gale was to be 
married before Jane did — Jack and you and 
everybody.” 

“ That was because Mrs. Gale wanted to 
break the news to Jane herself,” explained 
Katherine. “ She was afraid to write it to 
her — knowing how easily upset Jane is.” 

“ Well, anyway,” persisted Margery, “ it 
is hard on Jane — everybody says she was so 
happy over the little cottage and had made so 
many plans about what she and her mother 
were going to do. I really feel sorry for 
Jane.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 1 1 1 

“ So do I,” admitted Katherine. “ But she 
needn’t take it out so on the boys and all her 
new relations. And she might have gone to 
her mother’s wedding — look at the different 
way Marion has acted — and not made every- 
body so unhappy all round.” 

“ Yes,” Margery agreed, “ she has acted like 
a little goose. But j>erhaps it might have been 
easier for her if it had all come slower. And, 
of course, she couldn’t know how nice the boys 
are — some stepbrothers are perfectly horrid.” 

“ Let’s form a society for the coercion of 
Jane,” suggested Jack, “ and force her into 
loving her steps in spite of herself.” 

Margery demurred. “ No,” she said seri- 
ously, “ we mustn’t do that. She’ll have to do 
whatever she does of her own free will. It 
doesn’t do to play providence in other people’s 
lives — I’ve had enough experience of that,” 
she finished wisely. 

Jack looked at Margery and grinned. 
“ Listen to the words of wisdom from our 
grandmother,” he teased. 

Margery flushed to the brim of her big white 
hat, and Perry kicked at his brother under the 
table. “ Shut up, you fish,” he ordered. 


I 12 


MARGERT MORRIS 


“ You kicked me instead of Jack,” said Mar- 
gery with a laugh. “ But as to my words of 
wisdom, Jack — the burnt child dreads the fire. 
I’ve got myself into too many scrapes trying 
to manage other people’s business for them. 
Dick Ball, one of the Renwyck’s Town boys, 
says that I have the greatest genius for getting 
into scrapes that he ever saw. No — what I 
feel about Jane is this — all that we can do to 
help is just to be very nice and kind — and then 
to leave the rest to time and Jane.” 

Katherine looked at her approvingly. 
“ You’re a good little soul, Margie,” she said. 
“And I used to think you were the worst 
spoiled little scamp I ever saw, too. Have 
some more cakes, anybody? ” 

“ I wonder what Jane is thinking of now,” 
remarked Margery, pensively biting into a 
macaroon. “ I wonder if she feels sorry.” 

She would have been amused if she had 
known that Jane at that very moment was 
staring tragically at her reflection in the mirror 
of a drug-store window, and saying to herself : 

“ I might be able to stand it if only my hat 
had not been turned around! ” 


CHAPTER VIII 


“ i'm so glad you're going ” 

The morning after the meeting in the tea- 
house, Jane took her sketch-box out to the 
pine-tree. She felt restless and unhappy. 
With wistful eyes she glanced across the bay; 
if only she could hire old Simon Perkins to row 
her over to the sand-dunes where, hidden in 
some sheltered corner, she could paint in peace. 
She longed for the little dancing waves, the 
white-winged sailboats sweeping past, the ex- 
citing landing on the wet and slippery rocks at 
the bay side of the dunes, and then the great 
lonely spaciousness of the huge piles of sand. 
But Cousin Willy had gone to Winchester, and 
as the fishman and laundryman were both 
liable to call and present their bills that morn- 
ing, Jane must be at hand. So turning her 
back on the tempting bay, she began a sketch 
of the little cottage. 


113 


MARGERY MORRIS 


114 

As she worked her thoughts drifted off into 
day-dreams. Her drawing and painting had 
always been more of an amusement than a pos- 
sible career; it had filled up many lonely hours 
for her when her mother and Marion were 
away at work. Not until the night of the 
dance had she ever thought of using it except 
as an aid to the interior decorating she some- 
times thought of taking up when she was 
through school and must select some means of 
supporting herself. To-day, feeling sensitive 
and out-of -sorts, and, away down in her heart, 
ashamed of the way she had acted at the tea- 
house the day before, she toyed with the sooth- 
ing dreams of becoming rich and famous 
through her art. 

The little cottage faded from her sight, and 
she saw herself a famous artist, sweeping down 
the staircase of some baronial castle. She 
would wear white, she decided, letting her 
hands drop idle in her lap, gleaming white 
satin that would fall about her in soft trailing 
folds. Save for a great feather fan of blazing 
scarlet she would not have a touch of color, and 
not a jewel, except the pearl pins that would 
fasten the coils of dark hair piled on top of her 


AND PLAIN JANE 1 15 

head. And, as slowly, with regal grace, she 
would sweep down the great stairway, the 
dancing would stop, and people gazing at her 
in wonder would say, “ Who is that? ” And 
then someone would answer, “ That’s Miss 
Gale, the great artist.” And then 

A horn tooted at the gate, and Jane came 
back from baronial halls to pay the fish- 
man. 

“ I met the other lady down street,” said the 
man, “ an’ she ordered this here bass — git a pan 
fer it, won’t ye? ” 

Finding no other pan available, Jane 
brought out the dishpan, and was just hurry- 
ing her fishy burden into the house when Perry 
, Watkins appeared at the gate. 

“ Oh, Miss Gale,” he called, “ are you busy? 
May I see you for a moment? ” 

Startled, Jane said confusedly, “ Yes, no — 
yes,” and sank down on one of the benches of 
the little front portico, the dishpan on her lap. 
Perry took the opposite bench. 

“ I — well — I,” Perry began, finding the real 
Jane, armed with a dishpan and a fish, far more 
formidable than the soft-eyed girl of the 
imaginary interview he had been rehearsing 


1 1 6 MARGERY MORRIS 

ever since the afternoon before. “ I — well,” 
he took a long breath, “ I came to talk things 
over. You see, we are all going to be here this 
summer together — and I can tell you, we boys 
have been at school and camps so long that it 
seems fine to have a real home and somebody to 
mother us the way we have with Aunt Kate 
here. She’s been in California so long that we 
haven’t had her often before.” 

He paused. 

“ Yes,” faltered Jane, casting a longing 
glance at the door. 

“ And I believe that you are to be here this 
summer,” Perry went on hastily. “ Now, it 
seems to me to be rather a shame for us not to 
be good friends. No matter how we may feel 
about our parents marrying, we can be friends. 
There is going to be a crowd of us here this 
summer. Margery Morris is going to have a 
lot of people visiting her, and we can have a 
fine time.” 

Jane found her voice. “ But I don’t care 
for just a good time! ” she cried. 

“ Of course not,” agreed Perry hastily, wish- 
ing that she would put down that dishpan; it 
disconcerted him. 


AND PLAIN JANE 117 

“ Oh, don’t you see? ” Jane burst out de- 
spairingly. “ My mother was everything in 
life to me — and now you and your father have 
taken her away from me? ” 

“ I didn’t do it! It’s just as hard on me to 
have to give up my father! ” 

“ It couldn’t be. A boy’s father never 
means as much to him as a girl’s mother does 
to her.” 

“ Not on your life! ” Perry was emphatic. 
“ I don’t believe that anybody could be more to 
anyone than my father has been to me. Why, 
the fun we’ve had together! Going on hunt- 
ing trips and hikes, and last summer we went 
to Europe together. But the way I look at 
the thing is this — Dad has had a pretty hard 
life — you see when he was a young man he 
wanted to be an artist, but his father died and 
he had to turn in and support his mother and 
sisters. So he went into business. After 
a while he hit on his patents and made his 
money, and then he went back to college and 
did all the special scientific work that people 
make such a fuss about — but it was a hard up- 
hill struggle for a time for him. So now if he 
thinks that he will be happier for marrying 


1 18 MARGERY MORRIS 

your mother I think that the least we boys can 
do is to step aside.” 

Jane was not unmoved by this long speech, 
but she sat silent, staring at the fish on her lap. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said Perry suddenly, 
and rising he grasped the dishpan by its han- 
dles and put it down on the doorstep. “ That 
fish thing was getting me rattled. And your 
mother hasn’t had such an easy time either,” 
he went on. “ Anyway, that’s how your sister 
feels about it.” 

Jane struggled to control her quivering lips. 
“ Marion sold her birthright for a mess of pot- 
tage,” she quavered. 

Perry, in terror of a storm of tears, hastily 
changed the subject. “ Well, anyway, we’re 
all here together this summer,” he said cheer- 
fully, “ and it does seem as though we might 
have a good time. And I don’t mind telling 
you that we boys have a kind of feeling — a sort 
of half-formed wish — that we really could be 
like brothers and sister. You see there aren’t 
any girls in the family, except my cousin Kath- 
erine, and she’s older and goes in for society 
and all that sort of thing. So come on, let’s 
eat, drink and be merry, even if to-morrow we 


AND PLAIN JANE 119 

die — or even if our giddy young parents have 
gone and gotten married.” 

“ But,” cried Jane, trying to make her posi- 
tion clear, “ I don’t want to have a good time — 
I wouldn’t trade my mother for a million good 
times! I don’t want to be any boys’ sister! ” 

Perry got slowly to his feet and stood, very 
handsome and big, looking down at her. “ I’m 
sorry,” he said. “ Well, as there doesn’t seem 
to be any more to say on the subject, I think 
I’d better go.” 

He marched down the path and out the front 
gate. Jane picked up the dishpan from the 
step and started to go into the house. After 
all, she felt rather sorry for Perry; he too had 
lost by the marriage. Involuntarily, she 
turned and gazed after him. How good-look- 
ing he was in that woolly white sweater. As 
though conscious that she was looking at him, 
Perry stopped and looked back. Catching her 
glance, he smiled, and with a bound cleared the 
low stone wall and hurried toward her. 

“ Please, Jane,” he said meekly, although his 
blue eyes twinkled. “ I’d make you such a 
nice brother.” 

Jane hesitated. He was nice, she thought, 


120 


MARGERY MORRIS 


and after all he had done nothing; he hadn’t 
married her mother! She wanted to tell him 
that she was willing to be friends, but she was 
overcome by her fatal shyness. 

“ I’m — I’m, why, yes, I ” she stopped, 

speechless with confusion and emotion. 

She tried again. At any rate she could tell 
him that she was glad he had come to see her 
and had talked things over. 

“ I’m so glad that you’re going,” she said. 

“ Thank you,” answered Perry haughtily, 
and strode out of the gate and down the rocky 
path. 

J ane stared after him in horror. Once more 
her treacherous tongue had betrayed her. 

Recovering herself she ran to the gate and 
called after him: “I mean — oh, Perry! — I 
mean I am glad that you came ! 99 

But Perry was already out of earshot. 


CHAPTER IX 


OLD WICKERWORK 

Limp with laughter, Margery and Perry 
leaned back in the dilapidated old buggy and 
regarded the hilarious group clustered about 
its shaky wheels. 

“ You can jeer if you want to,” declared 
Margery between gasps, “ but I believe that 
you’re all green with envy ! ” 

“ Do you suppose it’s all right, dear? ” asked 
Mrs. Endicott rather faintly. “ The bottom 
might drop out of that old carriage at any mo- 
ment.” 

“ If only it would,” sighed Margery raptur- 
ously. 

The old livery-stable horse, raw-boned and 
dingy white, between the shafts of the still older 
buggy, tossed his scraggy neck to unsettle a fly 
perched there, and pawed languidly with one 
forefoot at the road. 


121 


122 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“ Really, Perry,” insisted Katherine anx- 
iously, “ that old beast looks as though he’d 
never get there — and I’ve just got to have 
those lemonade glasses, you know! I wish 
you’d give it up and go in the trolley.” 

“ Now, Katherine,” declared Perry, “ how 
anyone can cast doubts on such a handsome 
animal puzzles me. Don’t you know a race- 
horse when you see one? ” 

Katherine laughed in spite of herself. “ Oh 
Perry,” she protested, “ don’t be so absurd.” 

“ Never was more serious in my life. This 
is a race-horse — the famous Wickerwork. 
Used to do it in two-twenty.” 

He tightened the lines and pulled the old 
horse back from a refreshing meal of grass. 
“ If we’re going to get to Winchester and back 
before night, it strikes me that we had better 
start. Farewell, sweet Katherine,” with a nod 
to his cousin, “ we’ll bring you back the finest 
glasses to be had for love or money.” 

He shook the lines and the horse moved off. 
Margery leaned out of the carriage to wave a 
farewell to Mrs. Endicott and her household. 

“ It would be a joke, wouldn’t it, if the bot- 
tom of this old bus fell out? ” she confided to 


AND PLAIN JANE 123 

Perry as she settled back and took off her hat, 
uncomfortably wide for the narrow old-fash- 
ioned buggy. 

Perry grinned and fingered the worn handle 
of the whip. “We might have borrowed your 
grandfather’s ear, but I thought that the style 
of this rig would appeal to you.” 

“ It certainly does,” laughed Margery. 

“ The old livery-stable man didn’t know 
whether I was to be trusted with such a fine 
horse as this or not. Told me about twenty 
times that he had once been a race-horse, and 
to be sure to drive him with a loose rein.” 

Katherine Endicott was to give a small 
dance that evening to a group of her young 
friends who were part of a house-party at one 
of the resorts nearer the city, and finding a 
scarcity of glasses for the fruit punch had 
asked Perry and Margery to run over to Win- 
chester to buy her some. As the car had al- 
ready been dispatched to Vinehaven to bring 
some of the young guests, Perry had hired the 
old buggy and horse from the livery stable, 
feeling that they would provide more of a lark 
than the commonplace trolley car. 

“ Wouldn’t it be a joke if Jane should see 


MARGERT MORRIS 


124 

us,” observed Margery. “ She certainly would 
cut us to-day.” 

Perry’s face darkened. “ She’d have a little 
less use for her stepbrother than ever,” he said 
wrathfully. “ You might think that I had 
cooked up the whole scheme of father marrying 
her mother just to spite her.” 

“ It’s a shame,” agreed Margery, knowing 
that the true peacemaker first allows the over- 
charged heart to unburden itself. 

“ It sure is,” answered Perry grimly. 

“ But Perry,” Margery went on, “ Jane 
seems sweet to me. She’s so gentle and old- 
fashioned, and pretty in a different sort of way 
from other girls. I suppose she’s feeling all 
upset over things now, but after while she’ll get 
over it. I’ve been through things when I felt 
terribly — but I got over them after a while. 
And I’m just going to keep on asking her to do 
things — even if she does refuse. Katherine 
told me to ask her to the dance to-night — I’m 
to buzz around and help make things go, you 
know. So when I saw Jane at the post-office 
I told her about it, and about all those older 
boys and girls coming and said I was terribly 
scared of them, and wouldn’t she come and help 


AND PLAIN JANE 125 

me out. She refused, but she couldn’t help 
looking wistful. I don’t believe she has had 
many friends of her own age. Anyone can see 
she’s shy. And Perry, haven’t you noticed the 
funny way she twists her words up when she is 
embarrassed? She called the chiffon fichu on 
my dress the other night a 4 fishon chiffoo.’ ” 

Perry laughed. “ Yes, I noticed that.” 

“ Later on,” Margery went on, 44 when Polly 
Jameson and Esther Crowell visit me, I’m go- 
ing to give lots of informal little parties, pic- 
nics and clambakes and things like that — I’m 
going to ask Jane to them all — and I believe 
that she’ll be more normal after a while.” 

44 Hmmm,” said Perry, doubtfully. 

The progress to Winchester was not a rapid 
one. Not only was the old horse slow beyond 
words, but Margery must climb out every now 
and then to pick some flower or berry growing 
by the roadside; now a great bunch of sweet 
red clover, here a tuft of golden ragwort, there 
a bit of bayberry. 

Perry, although he pretended to grumble, 
did not really mind, for the road wound along 
through a pleasant country, with many a 
glimpse of the upper waters of the bay and 


126 MARGERY MORRIS 

the wide river through the branches of the 
trees. 

“ Where do you suppose Jane keeps herself 
all day long? ” asked Perry suddenly. “ I 
don’t see her around like the other girls.” 

“ Oh, she is studying at the art class in Win- 
chester. Aunt Kate and I were talking with 
Jane’s cousin yesterday, and she says that Jane 
has taken up art terribly seriousty lately.” 

“ Hmmm,” said Perry again. 

“ Besides — I think she’s very shy and retir- 
ing. Aunt Kate told me her mother says she 
calls herself ‘ Plain Jane,’ and thinks she’s aw- 
fully homely and unattractive.” 

“ Hmm. Well, here we are in Winchester, 
Margery, in spite of you and the horse. Who 
said we wouldn’t get here? ” 

They drove through the quiet streets and 
stopped at the furniture and pottery store 
where Perry got out. 

“ They are tying the things up,” he said, 
coming back a few minutes later. “ The man 
will bring them out and put them in the car- 
riage as soon as they are ready. If you don’t 
mind I’ll just cut down to the grocery and get 
those crackers and things Katherine wants. 


AND PLAIN JANE 127 

It’s on Water Street, and when they’ve brought 
out the glasses you can drive around there and 
meet me. Don’t let yourself be run away 
with,” he added as a piece of parting wit. 

Perry disappeared and Margery settled back 
in the carriage to wait for the packages. The 
old horse bent his head and nibbled at the patch 
of grass between the curbstone and the pave- 
ment, and Margery turned her attention to the 
passers-by along the quiet elm-shaded street. 
There were a good many people, she noticed, 
and they all seemed to be going in one direc- 
tion. Idly, she wondered what was going on. 

The clerk brought out the packages and put 
them in the back of the carriage, and Margery, 
having persuaded the horse to relinquish his 
meal of grass, started down the street. As she 
neared the cross road that would take her 
through to Water Street, a man with a red flag 
came running forward and waved her back; 
they were blasting for a sewer. 

Startled, and a little nervous, for she hated 
what she called “ loud bangs,” she stopped and 
looked up and down the street. 

A kindly passer-by, seeing her anxious face 
and guessing from the way she held her reins 


128 


MARGERY MORRIS 


that she was not an experienced driver, stepped 
to the curb. “ Looking for something, miss? ” 
he asked. 

“ Is there another street that will take me 
out to Water Street? ” 

“You can go back to that driveway there.” 
The man pointed with his thumb to a wide 
gateway in a tall wooden fence. “ That’ll take 
you into the old race-track grounds. They’re 
having a Chautauqua meeting there this after- 
noon, but if you just go in that gateway and 
follow the track it will take you right around 
outside the big meeting tent to the other gate- 
way on Water Street.” 

Margery thanked him, and carefully turning 
the buggy, a ticklish operation because of the 
high shaky wheels that threatened to lock and 
overturn the carriage, entered the tall gate. 

“ Tickets, miss,” demanded the gatekeeper. 

“ I’m just going through to Water Street — 
they’re blasting up the road there,” explained 
Margery hastily. 

“ All right. Follow the track round the 
tent and it will bring you out to the other 
gate,” and the man waved her on. 

Margery’s advent caused a ripple of interest 



BUT THE FORMER RACE-HORSE PLUNGED ON 






AND PLAIN JANE 129 

among the Chautauqua members who were ar- 
riving for a lecture on the “ Self-made Men of 
America.” The contrast between her forlorn 
equipage and her own dainty appearance was 
amusing. A small boy sang out, “ Say, lady, 
this ain’t no Noo York horse show! ” 

Embarrassed and amused, Margery drove 
on to the track, and hastily applied the broken 
whip to the back of her steed ; to which he paid 
not the slightest attention. 

“ Oh, dear, this tent is big — it will take an 
age to get around it,” she sighed, conscious of 
the amused spectators watching her from the 
tent, the side flaps of which were rolled up. 

Crash! Bang! 

The band started up a spirited march; and 
with a bound Wickerwork broke into a break- 
neck trot. 

“Whoa! Whoa!” shrieked Margery, and 
pulled with all her strength on the reins. 

But the former race-horse, once more on the 
familiar track, hearing again the music that 
had accompanied his youthful triumphs, and 
feeling the tight rein that of old had urged 
speed, kicked up his heels and plunged on. 

“ Gracious ! ” cried a group of women stand- 


i 3 o MARGERY MORRIS 

ing gossiping on the track and scattered — just 
in time. 

Round and round, outside the tent, flew 
Wickerwork and Margery, the lemonade 
glasses rattling a mad dance. 

“ Stop her! ” cried a woman, her voice lost 
in the noise of the band. “ It’s a runaway! ” 
But the rest of the audience, watching from the 
open tent, took the strange spectacle of the 
ramshackle vehicle and the pretty golden- 
haired girl as a vaudeville turn provided by 
a tactful Chautauqua management. “ Guess 
she’s the singer coming to sing country songs,” 
shouted one man to another. 

“This awful beast!” groaned Margery, 
hanging distractedly on to the reins. “ Will 
he go on forever? ” 

The band stopped with another violent crash. 
Almost as suddenly as his mad dash had begun, 
the old horse fell into a slow walk. 

The gate to Water Street being providen- 
tially near, Margery drove through and disap- 
peared, to the no small disappointment of the 
children. 

“ Well,” declared the gatekeeper as she 
passed, “if that isn’t old Wickerwork! He 


AND PLAIN JANE 131 

used to go round that very track in two- 
twenty.’ ’ 

Almost hysterical, Margery managed to 
guide her now thoroughly sedate steed to the 
grocery store, where she found Perry waiting 
for her, worried and annoyed. 

“ Well, Margery? ” he exclaimed. “ What- 
ever kept you? ” 

“Oh, Perry — don’t — don’t!” she gasped. 
“ If you could have seen me! — oh, I shall die! ” 

It was some time before Perry could get a 
connected account of what had happened at the 
race-track ground. When he finally succeeded 
in piecing together the story he insisted that 
Margery must have a chocolate sundae to re- 
store her. 

“ All right,” agreed Margery, with a final 
chuckle, “ if you’ll promise not to tell Dick 
Ball when he comes about Wickerwork — I’ll 
never hear the last of it if you do! ” 

As she stood on the steps of the tea-house 
waiting while Perry tied their steed — a sensible 
precaution in the light of Wickerwork’s recent 
flighty behavior — she saw Jane and a fellow 
art student passing by. Margery stood ready 
to speak, but Jane’s companion drew her atten- 


MARGERT MORRIS 


1 3 2 

tion to Perry bending over the hitching post. 
He was wearing the white flannels and the 
woolly white sweater that suited so well his 
dark coloring, and looked unusually handsome 
and manly. 

“ Who is that attractive boy, I wonder? ” 
remarked J ane’s companion. “ I’ve seen him 
around quite a lot lately — and I’d love to paint 
him.” 

Margery started and involuntarily waited 
for the reply. 

“ Why — he’s my stepbrother,” said Jane, 
with unconscious pride. 


CHAPTER X 


SWIMMING 

Clad in her bathing-suit, Jane lingered by 
the gate. It was dreary going in bathing 
alone, and she wished that she had someone to 
accompany her. Even Cousin Willy would 
be better than nobody; but she was playing 
bridge at the hotel. 

A red-haired, freckle-faced little boy came 
down the road muttering wrathfully to him- 
self. “ Mean old things,” Jane heard him say. 

“ What’s the matter? ” she asked with sud- 
den curiosity. 

The child stopped and smiled at her, a wide 
smile which disclosed that several front teeth 
were missing. “ Those mean old things back 
there,” he began, his face darkening. “ You 
know that house that has a sign on ‘ Come 
In’?” 

“ No,” said Jane. “ Oh, yes, I do,” as she 
133 


MARGERY MORRIS 


*34 

recalled a row of rather pretentious little cot- 
tages that had been given names to match, 
“ Bide-a-wee,” and “ Idlewild,” and, the last 
one on the row, “ Come In.” 

44 Well, I thought they meant it — the sign 
said 4 Come In,’ so I went in. An’ a woman 
found me there, an’ made an awful fuss — mean 
old thing! — an’ said she was going to go to my 
family about it, an’ to get out right away! 
Mean old thing! I wasn’t going to hurt her 
old house! ” 

Jane laughed, her heart warming to this 
sturdy, red-headed little boy, with his wide 
toothless grin. “ 4 Come In ’ is just the name 
of the cottage,” she explained. 44 I think that 
it’s a very silly name, and that it serves them 
right for people to take them at their word. 
But won’t you come in here? ” putting her 
hand on the gate. 

44 Sure,” said the child. 44 But wait a min- 
ute — here comes somebody I know. Whoeee ! 
Whoeee!” he shouted, waving his hand to 
someone coming down the path. 

It was Margery, very trim and graceful in 
her new black bathing suit, a black bathing 
cape floating out behind her in the wind. 


AND PLAIN JANE 1 3 5 

“ Hello, Jane,” she smiled. “ Hello, Andy 
boy,” she added, stopping to pull the child’s ear 
and to make a face at him that set him capering 
about her with shrieks of delight. “ Do it 
again — do it again, Margie ! ” 

“ No thanks,” she declined. “ The wind 
might change and then my face would be stuck 
that way. Are you going in bathing now, 
Jane? Come along — I’m alone, although I 
think Katherine or somebody is probably down 
there. Isn’t the water cold here! Scoot 
along, Andy, and get on your bathing suit.” 

As the little boy scampered off, Margery 
hesitated a moment. “ Andy is — Andy is,” 
she began. “ Well, I suppose you know that 
he’s little Andrew Watkins.” 

“ Oh,” said Jane blankly. She sighed, for 
she had been greatly taken by the little lad. 
She wished disconsolately that her stepbrothers 
were not so attractive in themselves. 

“ Come on,” said Margery, interrupting her 
revery. “ Let’s hurry.” 

Her arm linked in Jane’s, they ran laughing 
down over the rocks to the warm, sunshiny 
strip of sandy bathing beach. There Margery 
took off her cloak, and having weighted it down 


136 MARGERY MORRIS 

with a stone, tucked her curls into a rubber 
bathing cap which she covered with a black silk 
handkerchief. 

“ There,” she said, standing up. “ I’m 
ready now — come on.” 

Hand in hand they ran across a wet and 
shining strip of sand and dashed into the cold 
water. 

“ I wish that I could swim well enough to go 
out there to the rocks and dive off into deep 
water the way the boys do,” remarked Mar- 
gery, as she stood up after a brief and warm- 
ing swim. 

“ I wish that I could swim at all,” returned 
Jane. 

“ Come on — I’ll teach you. Oh, there’s 
Katherine and Mary Benton.” 

Katherine and a handsome, dashing girl that 
Jane had often noticed joined them. Kath- 
erine smiled pleasantly and made some remark 
about the coldness of the water as Margery 
introduced them, but Mary Benton only vouch- 
safed an indifferent nod. 

“ Hello, Jack,” she called, catching sight of 
Jack on the beach. “ Come here! ” 

Obediently, Jack came leaping through the 


AND PLAIN JANE 137 

water. Like most of the younger boys, he 
thought Mary Benton’s off-hand manners de- 
lightful. 

His cousin Katherine was not glad to see 
him, for she was afraid this meeting with Jane 
might prove embarrassing. “ 4 By the prick- 
ing of my thumbs/ ” she said, trying to give 
him a warning glance, 4 4 4 something evil this 
way comes/ ” 

In answer he dived for her feet. She saved 
herself by throwing herself on her back and 
swimming violently, and Jack seized Jane’s 
foot by mistake. 

With a scream Jane lost her balance and 
fell. Jack rose to the surface and, very red 
and embarrassed, joined the others in helping 
her up. With a muttered, 44 1 beg your par- 
don, I — I thought you were Katherine,” he 
backed off, his ready assurance for once 
eclipsed. 

44 Come on,” said Mary Benton, who was 
apt to grow bored when the attention was not 
centered on her. 44 It’s stupid here. Come on, 
let’s go out to the rocks and dive. Don’t let’s 
stay here like a lot of old grannies.” 

She was proud of her athleticism and of her 


138 MARGERY MORRIS 

casual, slap-dash air, cultivating an elaborately 
“ natural ” manner, that was in reality more 
affected than the sigh-away graces of the most 
early Victorian of misses. 

“ Come on, Jack,” she commanded. “ Don’t 
stand there like a sign-post, you poor fish, 
you.” 

“ I’m going to stay here,” said Margery 
quietly, “ and try to teach Jane to swim. Eless 
his heart! — there’s Andy on the beach in his 
bathing suit already.” 

Jack hesitated. 

“ Go along,” said Margery, waving him off 
as though he had been a poodle dog. “ Jane 
and I are going to swim.” 

Jane instantly decided to stay, and Mary 
Benton, not very well pleased, swam off with 
Katherine across the cove. 

“ Come on, Jane,” said Margery, seizing 
Jane firmly by the back of her belt. “ Now 
lie down and strike out. I won’t let you sink ! 
Go on.” 

Too embarrassed to protest, and made shyer 
by Jack’s presence, Jane allowed herself to be 
suspended on the surface of the water by her 
waistband. 


AND PLAIN JANE 139 

“ Now strike out,” Margery ordered. 
“ One, two, three! ” 

Jane struck out and a second later struck 
bottom. 

“ Gracious,” cried Margery as she hauled 
her up. “ I never thought that you would go 
down like that! Jack, you’ll have to help me 
hold her up. But, Jane, it’s very simple — you 
just pretend that you’re a frog. See, like 
this.” And Margery, who never suffered from 
self-consciousness, threw herself down on the 
water, and assumed one after the other all the 
exaggerated angles prescribed by the swim- 
ming-masters. “ See,” she said, standing up 
and putting a hand on Jane’s belt. “ It’s very 
easy — now just try to be a frog. Take hold 
on that side, Jack.” 

Obediently, Jane tried to be a frog. “ A 
very nice ladylike little frog,” declared Jack, 
who had found his voice again. 

“ Have confidence,” ordered Margery. 

With a great despairing gulp of salt water, 
Jane had confidence, and again Jack and Mar- 
gery had to fish her out from beneath the 
waves. 

“ Oh, please! ” she cried as blind and gasp- 


140 


MARGERY MORRIS 


ing she found herself on her feet once more. 
“ I’d rather not, I ” 

“ All right. You’ve had lesson enough for 
one day. But you’re doing splendidly,” Mar- 
gery encouraged her, “ and you’ll learn soon. 
Come on, Jack, teach me that side stroke.” 

Jane retreated closer in shore where the 
happy children paddled about and with shouts 
of glee jumped the gentle breakers that 
broke against the strip of sandy shore. 
Farther out she could see Margery and Jack 
racing each other, and hear their shouts of 
laughter over Margery’s attempts at fancy 
strokes, efforts that were usually more ambi- 
tious than successful. 

“ Hello,” cried little Andrew Watkins, 
clutching at Jane’s skirt. “ Come, jump the 
waves with me.” 

It was possible to maintain a dignified aloof- 
ness with Perry, or even, although it was diffi- 
cult, with Jack; but Jane found it impossible 
not to succumb to this friendly, snub-nosed lit- 
tle boy, and before she quite knew how it had 
happened, had hold of both his hands and was 
hopping up and down over the waves with him. 

“See that,” he pointed to a figure that dived 


AND PLAIN JANE 14 1 

from the point of rocks into the sea. “ That’s 
my brother Perry. He can swim an’ dive an’ 
do everything. I’m going to be just like him 
when I grow up. An’ that’s my brother Jack,” 
as another figure followed the first, and strik- 
ing the water flat, disappeared with a mighty 
splash. “ There comes Margery.” 

“ Jack’s deserted me,” Margery laughed as 
she came up to them. “ I think that I’ll go in 
now, for I’m almost frozen. You’d better 
come too, Andy. You know Aunt Kate 
doesn’t like you to stay in too long,” she in- 
sisted as Andrew begged for “ just ten minutes 
longer.” 

Each of the girls seizing one of his hands, 
they raced him through the water to the dry 
land, Andrew not knowing whether to take it 
as a tremendous lark or to be indignant over 
having his dip curtailed. 

44 There,” said Margery as she wrapped her 
cloak about her and, taking off her cap, shook 
her curls loose. “ Isn’t it funny the way your 
hair always gets a little wet, no matter what 
kind of a rubber cap you wear? ” 

As they climbed the path leading up over the 
rocks Jane thought how pretty she looked with 


142 


MARGERT MORRIS 


the curls falling loose over her black cloak, and 
having seen how friendly she was, a resolve 
grew. 

“ Would you? ” she began, “ would you? — 
would you? ” 

“ Would I what? ” 

“ Would you? — would you?” Realizing that 
she would never get beyond those two words, 
Jane made another attempt. “ There is going 
to be a competition for a scholarship in our cart 
lass — art class ! — and I’d love to paint you for 
it. If you wouldn’t mind.” 

Margery was frankly delighted. “ I’d love 
to,” she said. “ What shall I wear? ” 

Margery’s wardrobe was thoroughly dis- 
cussed, and it was finally settled that she was 
to wear a certain favorite pale green gown and 
that the sittings were to commence the coming 
Monday morning. 

“ That will be fine,” Margery exclaimed. 
“ On Saturday afternoon, my two great 
friends, Esther Crowell and Polly Jameson, 
who are coming to visit me, will get here. 
You won’t mind if I bring them, will you? 
They’re perfect dears — both of them, and they 
won’t disturb you a bit, I know. I’ll tell them 


AND PLAIN JANE 143 

that they have to be as quiet as mice. Polly’s 
always reading or writing, and Esther’s al- 
ways sewing — she’s ever so clever with her fin- 
gers, — so that will keep them busy.” 

“ I — I,” faltered Jane, appalled at the pros- 
pect of two strange girls. 

“ I’m afraid that I couldn’t come without 
them,” explained Margery. “ You see, it 
wouldn’t do for their hostess to run away and 
leave them.” 

Jane pulled herself together. “ I’d love to 
have them,” she said bravely. “ It — it was 
just that the thought of two girls whom I don’t 
know scared me.” 

“ I’ll see that they don’t make a bit of noise 
— or disturb you,” promised Margery. “ Per- 
haps they can sit out on the portico. Come on, 
Andy,” she added with an amused glance at 
the little boy standing with the water dripping 
from the peak of wet red hair on his forehead 
on to his small upturned nose. “We mustn’t 
let you take cold.” 

“ Well then — I’ll expect you — be sure to 
come early.” 

Andrew, feeling that Jane was neglecting 
him, and having no idea who she was, pushed 


144 


MARGERT MORRIS 


himself forward. “ I’ll tell you sumpin,” he 
said, “ sumpin awfully exciting. We’ve got a 
new mother and two new sisters. One of them 
is lovely, but the other sister is horrid and won’t 
know us at all. I wish you’d make a big ugly 
picture of her.” 


CHAPTER XI 

GUESTS 

Jane opened the oven door and carefully 
drew out a large pan of gingerbread and a rice 
pudding. Very cautiously she set them down 
on the table by the vine-clad window, and 
brushing the hair from her heated forehead 
with the back of her hand, gravely inspected 
them. 

“ They do look good,” she said critically, 
breaking off a small corner of one of the loaves 
of gingerbread and tasting it. “ I believe I’ve 
made a success this time.” 

Jane, who was proud of her pretty little blue 
and white kitchen with its charming view of 
ocean and bay from the back door, loved to 
experiment there with the cook-book as 
guide. 

“ It would be such fun,” she had declared to 
145 


146 MARGERY MORRIS 

Cousin Willy that morning, “ if only we ever 
happened to have the things the book always 
takes for granted — truffles, and apricot brandy, 
and anchovies, shallots and gum tragacanth.” 

As a rule Jane was successful in her at- 
tempts at cooking, although there had been an 
unforgettable pie that neither Cousin Willy 
nor Jane had been able to cut, a kettle of straw- 
berry jam that had cooked itself to gum while 
Jane read poetry on the front porch, and the 
beautiful chocolate pudding that had been 
dusted with soda instead of powdered sugar. 
But this morning no unfortunate accident had 
occurred to mar the pudding or impair the 
gingerbread. 

“ There,” said Jane as she spread a clean 
blue and white checked cloth on the table and 
turned the gingerbread out on it. “ Now, I 
have only the potatoes to stuff, and then I can 
go up-stairs to finish dressing.” 

Her blue gingham apron hung on its nail 
behind the door. Jane ran up the stairs to her 
own little room, where she finished making the 
bed and straightened the things on the little 
table by the window. After a moment’s anx- 
ious consideration before the looking-glass 


AND PLAIN JANE 147 

she slipped on a soft blue smock over her white 
dress and tied a blue ribbon to match round her 
dark hair. 

“ This old white dress is so awfully childish/’ 
she thought, “ and the smock does look a little 
more grown-up ai d professional. Oh! — those 
two strange girls i si -i added as she ran down 
the stairs. Half in dread, half in pleasant, ex- 
cited anticipation, she bit her under lip and 
twitched her shoulder. 

In the living-room Jane got out her easel 
and stood it in one corner. She had decided 
that she would pose Margery beside the vine- 
clad side window. Filling a big green bowl 
with daisies she placed it on the broad window- 
sill and set a little old-fashioned chair near. 
“ Now,” she said, “ everything’s ready,” and 
went to the panel mirror beside the fireplace to 
rearrange the blue ribbon that kept her soft 
hair from falling into her eyes. 

“ Prinking, prinking,” called a laughing 
voice from the open door, and Margery came 
in duly arrayed in the green gown and carry- 
ing a daisy-trimmed leghorn hat in case it 
might be needed. “ The others will be here in 
a few minutes,” she explained. “ I thought 


148 MARGERY MORRIS 

I’d better come ahead and get started. But I 
told them how to get here.” 

Margery sat down in the chair and folded 
her hands in her lap with a do-or-die expres- 
sion. She was resolved to be the very best of 
models. 

“ You needn’t hold your breath,” smiled 
Jane, after an interval of silence. 

Margery gave a long sigh. “ That’s just 
what I was doing,” she laughed. “No won- 
der my face was getting purple and my head 
was beginning to swim ! I was so afraid that I 
might wiggle too much that I overdid it. By 
the way, Dick Ball and Sam Bennet, two of 
the Renwyck’s Town boys who are staying at a 
hotel in Winchester, are with the girls. They 
won’t stay long — they’re going sailing with the 
Watkins boys.” 

Again Jane bit her lip, this time entirely in 
dread. “ Two boys,” she exclaimed. “ Two 
strange boys? ” 

“ Yes — Dick and Sam,” answered Margery, 
cheerfully unconscious that there was anything 
terrorizing in the prospect of two strange 
boys. “They’re both ever so nice. Sam’s lots 
of fun — but Dick is awfully popular. You’ll 


AND PLAIN JANE 149 

like him too, I think — he wants to be an archi- 
tect, and he draws very well, so you two can 
talk art.” 

She sat back and was silent, and Jane went 
on with her work. As she blocked in Mar- 
gery’s charming outlines, a faint doubt assailed 
her. Had she been wise to make quite such an 
ambitious start? Would it not have been bet- 
ter to have had surer foundations before she 
launched out so publicly on a portrait of this 
girl who would expect her to do something 
worth while? She began to realize how little 
she knew. But fame and fortune and the gifts 
in their train beckoned to her persistently; she 
longed unutterably to achieve something that 
would make her completely free from her fam- 
ily and her new connections. Her mind was 
too firmly on her goal to consider the difficul- 
ties of the way to it. 

Nevertheless, she sighed, and gripped her 
stick of charcoal so fiercely that she broke it. 

“ What’s the matter? ” asked Margery. 
“ Aren’t I behaving right? ” 

“You’re doing perfectly,” answered Jane, 
and to keep herself from growing nervous fixed 
her mind firmly on the days to come when, 


MARGERY MORRIS 


150 

splendid in white satin, she should sweep 
through baronial halls. 

Margery sighed in her turn. She was grow- 
ing bored, and she wished that Jane would talk 
to her. Posing was not what she had thought 
it would be. 

Gay voices came floating down the road. 

“ There they are,” cried Margery with relief, 
jumping up. 

“ There they are,” echoed Jane, also feeling 
a certain relief. 

Margery ran to the door. “ This way,” she 
called. “ Here we are — in here ! ” 

A moment later the room seemed to Jane to 
be filled with boys and girls. 

“ This is Polly Jameson, Jane,” said Mar- 
gery, putting her hand on the arm of a tall girl 
in a tan sweater, “ and this is Esther Crowell — 
and this Dick Ball — and Sam Bennet.” 

“ How do you do?” murmured Jane shyly 
to the floor. 

When she found courage to raise her eyes 
again she met the friendly gaze of the girl 
Margery had called Polly. 

“ I’m ever so glad to meet you,” said Polly 
cordially. “ Margery has been telling me 


AND PLAIN JANE 15 1 

about you, and this duck of a cottage. Isn’t 
Wyanoke the most perfect place? I know 
that we are going to have a glorious time ! ” 

“ Yes,” chimed in Esther Crowell, “ we’re 
going to have a glorious time. And Margery 
was a dear to ask us.” 

“ Adoring as usual, Esther,” laughed Sam. 
“ Whenever Esther has a few minutes to spare, 
Miss Gale, she puts in the time by remarking 
on what special model angels our esteemed 
friends Polly and Margery are.” 

Dick, the big boy whose blond head seemed 
to Jane’s excited imagination almost to touch 
the ceiling, smiled and said nothing. That 
Margery should be admired was to him too 
much in the natural order of things to make a 
fuss over it. 

Margery herself laughed and sat down again 
on the little rocking-chair. “ Jane will be 
wishing we were at the bottom of the sea if we 
interrupt her work like this. So you won’t be 
able to stay long.” 

“ Yos’m,” said Sam with ostentatious meek- 
ness. “ We’re going sailing with Perry in 
just a few minutes.” 

The others laughed and talked while Jane 


MARGERY MORRIS 


J5 2 

sat mostly silent, too shy and too absorbed in 
watching her guests to find much to say. 
What manner of people were these, her wide 
eyes seemed to ask, who had invaded her little 
home? 

Dick, she decided quickly, she liked; his big- 
ness and his blondness appealed to her, and she 
liked his steady gray eyes and his pleasant 
smile. But he did not say much, and she felt 
rather in awe of him. Rosy-cheeked, round- 
faced, talkative Sam was far less terrorizing. 

Esther, too, she reassured herself was not so 
frightening. Esther, like Sam, was round and 
rosy, although her hair and eyes were as dark 
as Sam’s were light. She was sweet and 
dainty, and her little pink gingham frock was 
neatness and taste itself, but she did not have 
the style and air of either Margery or Polly. 
Jane found Esther somehow comforting. 

She was both fascinated and scared by Polly 
— Polly seemed so vivid, so sure of herself, so 
easily cordial, so everything that Jane was not. 
Polly, she decided, was not exactly pretty with 
her rather long nose and square chin, but her 
face had character and charm and she carried 
herself unusually well. 


AND PLAIN JANE 1 53 

Margery, noticing Jane’s thoughtful expres- 
sion, took it to mean that she was annoyed at 
having her work interrupted and promptly 
raised her eyebrows meaningly at Dick. 

“ What’s the matter, Margery? ” asked 
Dick, the usual feminine strategies having 
failed before the usual masculine obtusenesses. 
“ What are you raising your eyebrows at me 
for? ” 

“ Nothing,” answered Margery, momenta- 
rily embarrassed. 

Dick saw a light. “ Oh,” he said, “ so it’s 
time to go.” He stood up and seizing Sam 
by the back of his collar, obligingly hauled him 
to his feet. “ Come on, — it’s time for us to go.” 

Sam, who was enjoying himself, demurred. 
“ What’s your hurry? ” 

A loud clear whistle from the road decided 
the question, and Dick and Sam went out to 
join the Watkins boys. 

Quiet fell on the room again. Polly and 
Esther settled down; Polly with the “ House 
of the Seven Gables,” which she declared she 
was reading in preparation for the trip to old 
Salem, on which Margery must take them, and 
Esther with a diminutive pair of rompers for 


MARGERY MORRIS 


154 

her adored little brother Jimmie on which she 
was cross-stitching a strange monster she called 
a rabbit. 

Jane turned again to her easel. As she 
worked her self-possession came back and she 
grew less uneasy. Perhaps she was going to 
enjoy painting Margery after all; at any rate 
there was going to be some kind of fun 
about it. 

The time slipped past in the cool, pretty 
room, and Jane could scarcely believe her ears 
when Margery suddenly exclaimed, “ Why, 
there come the boys! It must be nearly one 
o’clock.” 

Again the boys trooped in, and again the 
little room seemed to be overflowing with peo- 
ple. Jane felt shyer than even before and 
gazed more determinedly at the floor. Sud- 
denly a voice sounded in her ear, and she real- 
ized that Dick was speaking to her. 

“ This is a jolly little old house,” he said. 
“ I noticed the doorway as I came in. Funny 
what a lot those old chaps knew about building, 
wasn’t it? We have an old house at home.” 

Jane found her courage again. Perhaps 
Dick was not so terrifying after all. “ Would 


AND PLAIN JANE 155 

you like to see the dining-room? ” she asked. 
“ That’s really the quaintest room in the 
house.” 

They crossed the narrow hall to the dining- 
room, and after Dick had duly admired the old 
fireplace and corner cupboard, it occurred to 
Jane to open the door into the kitchen. “ This 
is old, too,” she said. “ And I love the view 
from the back door.” 

She had forgotten the gingerbread, but as 
she saw it spread out on the checkered cloth, 
and remembered the rice-pudding and stuffed 
potatoes, a thought came to her, which she dis- 
missed as too rash and daring. 

But it came back to her again when she and 
Dick had joined the others in the living-room, 
and when the others clustered about Dick and 
Margery to watch them experiment with 
Jane’s Ouija board, she slipped out of the 
room and ran up-stairs. 

“ Do you suppose, Cousin Willy,” she de- 
manded, “ that it would be very dreadful if I 
asked them to stay for luncheon? There’s the 

rice pudding, you know, and, and ” she 

paused, breathless, to wait for Cousin Willy’s 
objections.. 


156 MARGERY MORRIS 

But for once Cousin Willy found nothing to 
condemn. “ I think it would be fine. Don’t 
worry about things to eat — there’s plenty in 
the house. I’m glad for you to have some 
young people — you need young society.” 

Jane, missing the usual objections, felt it 
necessary to furnish some. “ But Cousin 
Willy,” she pointed out, “ Margery is used to 
lots of servants, and having everything done 
perfectly. She wouldn’t understand the way 
we do things. And I suppose the others live 
the same way.” 

“ Don’t be a snob,” answered Cousin Willy 
briefly. “ They’ll have just as good a time as 
if you had a dozen butlers.” 

If Jane had any doubts of her guests enjoy- 
ing it, they were speedily dispelled. Shy as 
she was Jane had the traditions of hospitality 
and she managed to make the boys and girls 
feel at home. Cousin Willy had been a belle 
in her youth and she still could be charming, 
and very amusing as well, when she chose to 
exert herself. To-day she did choose, and it 
was a happy, and somewhat hilarious group 
that finally rose from the lunch table. 

“ Oh, dear — I never laughed so much in my 


AND PLAIN JANE 157 

life ! ” declared Margery faintly, helping her- 
self up by the back of her chair. “ Jane, we’ll 
all have to go in bathing this afternoon to re- 
cuperate — the tide is high about three, isn’t it?” 

“ The high is tied about four,” corrected 
Jane, the problem of what to do with her 
guests next rising up to embarrass her. 

They all laughed again. 

“ Let’s wait until four, then,” suggested 
Sam. “ I’m too timid to trust myself in those 
cruel green waves unless the high is tied! ” 

Jane laughed with the rest. “ My poor 
tongue!” she cried. “Now, let’s go out on 
the portico.” 

“ Oh, can’t I help wash the dishes? ” asked 
Margery. “It would be such fun! And 
really, I can do it very well. Do you know, 
I’m getting awfully hard up — and grandpapa 
says I have to stay within my allowance. But 
up here with the tea-house and everything, 
money just melts! Our old cook Kiley gets 
awfully cross if she has to wash the dishes, and 
Sarah has rheumatism in her hands, and Lizzie 
is on her vacation, so I thought I’d try to get 
grandpapa to let me wash up for a dollar a 
week.” 


158 MARGERY MORRIS 

“ Behold Margery Morris, the great Dollar- 
a- Week-Dish- Washer! ” cried Dick, at his fa- 
vorite game of teasing Margery. 

Jane flew to defend her favorite. “ I’m sure 
she’d make a wonderful Dollar-a-Dish-Weak- 
Washer, or anything else she tried to be,” she 
said warmly. 

“ You’ve spoken truly,” answered Dick, 
while they all laughed. “ A dollar a dish is 
just about what it would cost Mr. Morris. As 
it is Margery, she would probably wash those 
dishes with so much energy that there wouldn’t 
be one left at the end of the week. So that 
part’s wrong about her being a weak-washer.” 

“ All right,” said Margery tranquilly, too 
accustomed to Dick’s teasing to pay any atten- 
tion to it. “ I’ll be a Wallor-a- Week-Dish- 
Dasher, if that suits you any better.” 

Then she paused and looked grave. 
Through the open window she could see Perry 
and Jack strolling down the road, and catch 
the unconsciously wistful glances they cast at 
the home where all of their circle were welcome 
but themselves. 


CHAPTER XII 


ALONG THE SALEM ROAD 

“ Oh, isn’t this fun!” cried Polly, leaning 
back luxuriously in the big touring car rolling 
along the beautiful North Shore, through pine- 
scented woods and past vistas of blue sea, to- 
ward Salem. “ Did you ever see such woods 
— and such rocks — and, oh, Margery! — such 
cottages and gardens.” 

Margery smiled and patted Polly’s knee. 
“ It is nice, isn’t it? ” she said. She was feel- 
ing very happy this beautiful summer morn- 
ing. Never, she thought, had any girl been so 
happy, or had such wonderful friends — or such 
a good time! Ever since Polly and Esther 
and the boys had come up from Renwyck’s 
Town it had been one continuous round of fun ; 
dancing in the evening in the big living-room 
of the cottage, or on warm evenings, on the 
wide veranda ; swimming and canoeing or sail- 
ing, or tennis on Mrs. Endicott’s court. There 
159 


160 MARGERY MORRIS 

were a number of other young people in Wya- 
noke who had been glad to join such a jolly 
group, but as a rule the Endicott and Morris 
households preferred their own very congenial 
society. 

This morning Mrs. Endicott and Katherine 
were taking them all to visit old Salem and its 
historic streets and buildings. Jane had been 
invited, but finding that her stepbrothers were 
going she had refused, although Margery had 
pointed out to her that as they were taking two 
cars, she would not have to be in the same auto- 
mobile as the Watkins boys. 

“ If Bunnie and Mrs. Jameson were here,” 
remarked Esther, leaning around Polly to 
speak to Margery, “ it would be the same 
crowd in this car that went to Princeton on our 
famous trip.” 

Perry, who was driving, half turned round. 
“ Who’s Bunnie? ” he inquired. 

“ My cousin,” answered Dick. “ She was 
visiting us last winter from the West. She 
went home just a few days before we came up 
here. She had her arms pretty badly burned 
about the first of June and it left her rather 
weak and homesick. If it hadn’t been for 


AND PLAIN JANE 161 

Margery, nobody knows what would have been 
the result — that day she got herself on fire.” 
He paused and looked grave. 

“ What happened? ” asked Perry, but Dick 
went on with a teasing grin at Margery. “ Oh, 
Margie has been quite a person in Renwyck’s 
Town! Sometime you ought to get her to 
tell you about the days when she first came and 
the excitement she raised.” 

Margery laughed, then sighed and looked 
across a garden gay with brilliant phlox and 
tall snap-dragon to the blue waters of a little 
inlet. How complicated life had seemed at 
one time, she thought ; how full of pitfalls that 
one couldn’t help tumbling into. And how 
simple it all seemed now! — just to float on the 
waves of happiness, to enjoy oneself and be 
happy, and have all one’s friends about one. 
Well, she had learned a lot about life and liv- 
ing, and Margery, in her comfortable corner of 
the big car, felt sorry for those — like Jane — 
who still had so much to learn. 

“ It’s too bad Jane isn’t here,” whispered 
Esther. “ I think that she would have en- 
joyed it if she only would have come.” 

Margery nodded. “ Yes,” she whispered 


162 


MARGERY MORRIS 


back. “ I think it’s too bad — Jane could have 
a fine time if she only would.” 

“There it is — there’s Salem! See, in the 
distance! ” pointed out Perry, and a little later 
they drew into Salem by the quaint and wind- 
ing highway from Marble Harbor, and were 
trundling along beautiful Lafayette Street 
and under the Derby elms, admiring the 
stately old houses, relics of the day when Salem 
was a great seaport town, home of the mer- 
chantmen that sailed round the world and 
brought back such wonderful cargoes. 

“ Which shall it be first — witches, or the 
House of the Seven Gables? ” asked Mrs. En- 
dicott as the two cars drew up side by side for 
a consultation. 

“ Oh, the House of the Seven Gables,” cried 
Polly who had read and reread the book in 
preparation for her visit. 

“ The House,” echoed the other girls. 

They had no difficulty in finding the famous 
house, for they were waylaid by small boys who 
ran after them and climbed on the running- 
boards when the cars slowed up at a crossing. 
“ Show you the House of the Seven Gables fer 
five cents ! ” 


AND PLAIN JANE 163 

They found it in what was once the fashion- 
able quarter of the town, now with the fine old 
houses turned into tenehients, but still suggest- 
ing something of their ancient state. At the 
end of Turner Street it stood, an old, old house, 
surrounded by trees, with a view across the 
Salem harbor, lying still and sparkling in the 
sunshine of the summer morning, to Marble- 
head in the distance. 

“ Oh, isn’t it a lamb-chop?” sighed Polly 
happily, gazing up at the sharp-pointed gables 
of the ancient house, its gray, weather-beaten 
walls, and faded red chimneys, and the tiny 
casements sparkling in the sun. 

“Polly — Polly!” laughed Mrs. Endicott. 
“ How can you be so irreverent as to apply 
schoolgirl similes to this gloomy old home of 
romance.” 

She put her hand on the latch of the tiny 
shop, and with a jangling of the shop-bell 
opened it. 

Inside the tiny shop were souvenirs, toys and 
candies, and quaint gingerbread men, that the 
girls insisted on purchasing and eating then 
and there. Polly, perhaps, regretted that the 
lady behind the counter was so much younger 


164 MARGERT MORRIS 

and more charming than Hepzibah of the 
story, but the others did not, and enjoyed hav- 
ing her show them over the old house, where 
Hawthorne had so often visited his strange re- 
cluse cousin, and which he had made the setting 
of his immortal book. Mrs. Endicott was par- 
ticularly interested in the fine old furniture 
which, when the house had been restored, had 
been placed again in the stately old rooms, but 
the boys and girls were most delighted with 
the secret staircase. 

“ Oh, why don’t people have secret staircases 
in their houses now? ” cried Margery. “ In- 
stead of having chutes for soiled clothes, and 
linen cupboards, and stupid things like that? 
Dick, I hope that when you’re an architect 
you’ll put a secret staircase in every house you 
build.” 

“ I like the House of the Seven Gables best 
of all,” remarked Esther after they had visited 
the witch house and Gallows Hill and some of 
the shops. “ I don’t care much for witches — 
it seems dreadful to me, — all these witch souve- 
nirs and things and the whole town making so 
much money out of the poor old woman it 
killed so unjustly ages ago.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 165 

“ I think so, too,” agreed Sam. 

“ But don’t you love some of the old houses? 
Wouldn’t you like to have lived in the old day 
when the great sailing vessels were coming here 
from India and China with their wonderful 
cargoes; all kinds of spices and ivories and 
silks and jewels and things? ” asked Polly wist- 
fully. 

In common with other romantic tempera- 
ments Polly was often homesick for the past. 

They stopped to look at a large old house 
standing back in a garden and to admire the 
beauty of its Colonial doorway and its air of 
settled and serene dignity. 

“ And now,” said Polly, “ I want to see the 
house with the ‘ chamber under the eaves ’ 
where Hawthorne lived and wrote so long. 
Think of it — year after year, shut up there, 
scarcely ever going out except at night, and 
writing, writing, all the time — and having so 
little of what he wrote published! ” 

“ There’s an example for you, Polly,” re- 
marked Jack teasingly. “ We’ll have to get 
you a little room where you can burn up the 
thousands of masterpieces you write and can’t 
get published.” 


1 66 


MARGE RT MORRIS 


Polly laughed good-naturedly. “ Never 
mind, Jack-be-nimble, Jack-be-quick,” she 
said. “ Hawthorne won fame in his little 
room.” 

“ Here you are, Polly,” said Perry, stopping 
before a tall, high-shouldered wooden struc- 
ture, plainly a tenement-house, standing in a 
mean and slummy street. “ Here you are — 
this is No. 12 Herbert Street.” 

No amount of enthusiasm for literary shrines 
could blind Polly to its dreary aspect. “ Oh,” 
she cried, disappointed, “ is that it? Oh, 
dear!” 

Margery tried to comfort her. “ Well, any- 
way,” she said, “ the beach and the ocean aren’t 
far off. And he could look out of the window 
at that church steeple — perhaps it seemed very 
artistic with the sunset behind it. And besides, 
this neighborhood has gone down — it probably 
didn’t look a bit like this when Hawthorne 
lived here.” 

“ Yes,” said Polly, “ that is so. But that 
house could never have been anything but hid- 
eous. Well, it just shows that outside things 
don’t make as much difference as we think. 
But imagine Hawthorne’s being patient 


AND PLAIN JANE 167 

enough to go on writing and writing without 
much hope in that dreary place.” 

“ Now, let’s go and see the Custom House,” 
suggested Mrs. Endicott. “ There’s another 
place where Hawthorne was patient. For the 
work there was uncongenial and he longed to 
have time to write.” 

They went to the lofty neighbor of the 
humble dwelling, the big, square Custom 
House with its wide granite steps and columned 
portico. 

“ Do you remember,” asked Mrs. Endicott, 
“ when he was dismissed from his position here, 
how he went home to break the news to his 
wife? And how she exclaimed, ‘ Oh, then you 
can write your book ! ’ ? And how, when he 
smiled and answered that he did not know 
where their 4 bread and rice were to come from 
while the story was writing,’ she brought out 
from some hiding place a pile of gold that she 
had saved from the weekly household expenses. 
I always like to think about that story.” 

44 There’s another example for you, Polly,” 
remarked Jack. 44 Always keep a pile of gold 
on hand for your husband.” 

44 1 don’t intend to bother with a husband,” 


1 68 


MARGERY MORRIS 


retorted Polly, calmly, with a backward look at 
the Custom House. 

“ And now for luncheon,” said Mrs. Endi- 
cott, as they left Salem, “ as soon as we find a 
suitable place we will get out and unpack our 
tea-baskets.” 

They had some trouble in finding the spot 
their imagination had painted as the ideal one 
for the picnic luncheon. 

“ ‘Sweetly along the Salem road, 

Bloom of orchard and lilac showed , 9 9 9 

Mrs. Endicott quoted ruefully. “ I wish that 
they would show for us. A flowering orchard 
would be just the thing.” 

“ But the orchards aren’t blooming now,” 
objected Jack. 

“ Don’t be so literal, Jack,” laughed his 
aunt. “ That was just a flight of poetic fancy 
on my part. Oh, there, children, see that little 
strip of wood ahead — perhaps we’ll find the 
perfect spot there! ” 

A little clearing in the woods gave a vista of 
the ocean, brilliantly blue and with a white- 
winged sailboat darting upon it. A tiny fern- 
bordered brook meandered toward the sea, and 


AND PLAIN JANE 169 

a strip of sun-dappled grass beside it seemed to 
invite the picnickers to stop and spread there 
the contents of their tea-baskets. 

“ Oh, isn’t this glorious? ” cried Margery as 
she sat with her back against a pine-tree, wav- 
ing a sandwich in one hand and an olive in the 
other. “ Don’t you love picnic meals? ” 

“ Especially the beasts,” declared Jack as 
he disputed the possession of a sandwich with 
a yellow- jacket and was almost defeated. “ I 
haven’t swallowed more than three ants and 
five caterpillars.” 

“ Why, Jack,” said Polly, “ you ought to be 
ashamed to mention such a trifle. Nobody 
minds those things at a picnic! Oh, dear,” as 
she unpacked a box of highly colored fancy 
cherries, “ these cherries got crushed.” 

“ Cherries are so perishable,” commented 
Esther. 

“ You mean,” laughed Polly, “ that Perrys 
are so cherishable, — as Jane would say it.” 

“ Not when they are stepbrothers,” put in 
Perry, throwing an olive-stone at the squirrel 
peeping at them around the trunk of a tree. 

“ Cheer up, Perry,” urged J ack. “ Smile 
an’ show him’s pretty toofies. Or rather,” 


MARGERY MORRIS 


170 

folding his hands on his knees and dropping his 
head with an absurd imitation of Jane, “ peer 
up, Cherry.” 

“ Jack, behave,” ordered Mrs. Endicott, but 
Jack was enjoying himself too much to stop. 
“ Ladies and gentlemen — or I should say, 
gadies and lentlemen — I will now give you an 
address in the style of my esteemed sister Jane 
Gale — or Gain Jail, I should say. Would 
you prefer a lecture on Keats and Shelly, or 
one on Sheets and Kelly, as Jane would say? 
Or, or — er — well, — or would you ladies prefer 
to have me tell your fortunes, and tell you 
about a certain gentleman with hooked eyes 
and a black nose who will cross your paths? 
And — and ” 

“ Sit down and shut up,” ordered Perry, and 
Jack, having reached the end of his inventive 
powers, meekly accepted his brother’s invita- 
tion. 

“ I think it’s a shame to make fun of Jane, 
Jack,” said Polly warmly. “ I think she’s 
simply sweet.” 

“ It’s very ill-bred and unkind of you,” said 
his aunt severely. 

Jack flushed and said nothing, and Margery 


AND PLAIN JANE 17 1 

came to his rescue. “ I tease Jane to her face, 
Aunt Kate,” she said gently. “ She thinks the 
slips she makes are awfully funny now, and she 
often tells me, when I am posing for her, about 
the killing things she has said when she was em- 
barrassed. But we all feel rather cross at her 
to-day because she wouldn’t come with us.” 

Mrs. Endicott sighed. “ Poor Jane,” she 
said. “ But now,” she added, looking at the 
watch on her wrist, “ I have to be home very 
soon — I’m sorry to break up this pleasant 
party, but the Hootens are coming this after- 
noon, and I must be there.” 

“ Oh, mother,” protested Katherine, “ it’s a 
shame to hurry away from this perfect spot. 
And we haven’t finished yet, either — I’m still 
hungrjr. Can’t you go on without us? ” 

“ But how would you get home? You can’t 
all go in one car.” 

“ Walter can drive you home in our car, 
Aunt Kate,” put in Margery, “ and the rest of 
us can pile in the other when we are ready 
to go.” 

“ I’ll look after them, mother,” added Kath- 
erine, “ and bring them all, especially Jack, up 
in the way they should go.” 


MARGERT MORRIS 


172 

“ We’ll be pretty crowded all in one car,” 
said Perry. “ But we’re near the station here, 
and part of us can go home to Winchester by 
train.” 

An hour later Margery, Perry, and Dick, 
who had voted for the train, climbed aboard at 
the pretty little rustic station set in the woods. 
The train was crowded, as the afternoon trains 
from the city were apt to be, and they had to 
scatter through the car. Margery sat down 
beside a stout, middle-aged woman who oblig- 
ingly gave her a magazine to look at. But an 
illustration in it reminded her of Jane’s shy 
prettiness, and her thoughts drifted off to her 
new friend. Jane, she decided, seemed livelier 
and more like other girls than she had at first, 
and she looked stronger and healthier, too. 
They had had some long talks together in 
Jane’s pretty little living-room, while Margery 
was posing for the portrait, and she had come 
to know something of the meagerness and the 
restrictions of the life that Jane had led, and a 
little of her dreams for the future. Margery 
knew that the other girl admired her and de- 
pended upon her, but she felt disappointed that 
she had not been able to change her attitude to- 


AND PLAIN JANE 173 

ward her stepfather and stepbrothers. “ I 
can’t — I just can’t pretend I like them,” Jane 
would say with quivering lips and Margery 
would have to drop the subject. 

The train stopped at another little rustic sta- 
tion, and Margery, so wrapped up in Jane 
were her thoughts, was scarcely surprised to 
see Jane herself enter the car. It seemed al- 
most as though she had conjured her up. As 
a place was made for Jane toward the front of 
the car, directly across the aisle from Perry, 
Margery noted with amusement; she remem- 
bered that all the members of the art class had 
been invited to visit that afternoon the studio 
of a well-known artist whose summer home was 
on the North Shore. Jane was evidently com- 
ing home alone earlier than the others. 

Margery picked up the magazine again and 
tried to interest herself in a story. Suddenly 
a stifled exclamation caught her attention and 
she raised her eyes. Jane, her clieeks scarlet 
and her eyes big and frightened, was frantic- 
ally searching for something while the big, 
grim conductor stood sternly over her. 

“ I — I — I’ve lost it,” stammered Jane. 
“ What shall I do? ” 


MARGERY MORRIS 


*7 4 

“ Guess you’ll have to get off at the next 
station,” said the conductor, a notoriously un- 
pleasant and unpopular person. 

Margery, guessing that Jane had lost her 
purse, was about to go forward to her assist- 
ance, when Perry leaned over and put his hand 
on the man’s arm. “ I’ll settle this,” he said 
as the conductor turned. “ I happen to know 
the young lady.” He slipped some money 
into the other’s hand, and the interested and 
amused passengers, seeing that the little com- 
edy was over, turned back to their papers and 
to looking out of the window. 

“ Of course, she’ll have to thank him now,” 
thought Margery, “ and they’ll have a talk to- 
gether.” 

But Jane, her cheeks still scarlet, only man- 
aged to give Perry the shyest little peck of a 
bow, and turned her gaze resolutely out of the 
window. 

“ Hello, Jane,” said Margery as she stepped 
down to the platform at the Winchester sta- 
tion. 

“Oh,” cried Jane, startled, “were you on 
that train? ” 

“ Yes, I was there. I was just coming to 


AND PLAIN JANE 175 

your rescue when Perry got in ahead of 
me.” 

“ Oh, wasn’t it awful? I’ve lost my purse 
— and it had two dollars in it. I was so scared; 
I don’t know what I’d have done if Perry 
hadn’t helped me out! ” 

“ Why didn’t you thank him then? ” asked 
Margery severely. “ You were awfully 
snippy.” 

“ I didn’t mean to be,” answered Jane miser- 
ably, “ I — I just couldn’t help it. I really was 
humbly grateful.” 

“ Well, here he is — thank him now.” 

“ Oh, I can’t,” whispered Jane in a sudden 
panic of shyness. “ What shall I say to him? ” 

“ Say just what you said to me — that you’re 
humbly grateful.” 

Jane turned to Perry, who, with Dick, was 
leaning against a baggage truck waiting for 
the girls to be through with their conversation. 
“ I’m — I’m,” she said meekly, “ I’m grumbly 
hateful.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


PLANS 

“ Grandpapa/' said Margery, “ we used ten 
pounds of butter last week.” 

“ That is nice,” answered Mr. Morris sleep- 
ily. He had just wakened from a little nap. 

“ But, grandpapa,” Margery’s tone was 
tragic, “ that’s too much. Kiley is entirely too 
extravagant. There is no sense in using as 
much butter in cooking as she does. I wish 
that you would speak to her about it.” 

Mr. Morris grew more wakeful. “ Speak- 
ing to ” Kiley was something that he did not 
enjoy. “ I, well, — well, of course, she has to 
have the things to cook with,” he began. 

Margery laughed. “ I believe that you are 
afraid of Kiley, grandpapa. I suppose that I 
shall have to do the lecturing myself. Of 
course at home in Renwyck’s Town where we 
have our own cows, it’s different, but up here, 
176 


AND PLAIN JANE 177 

where we have to buy every bit of butter, she 
will have to be more careful.” 

Quite determined, Margery turned back to 
the household bills which she had spread out 
on the big porch table and weighted down with 
shells to keep them from blowing away in the 
sea-breeze. 

“ Dear me,” she commented, “ there’s a lot 
to do in running a house — I never realized be- 
fore how hard mamma must have to work to 
keep the house up to the standard that she does, 
and to entertain and do all things that she does 
beside.” 

With a capability beyond her years, Mar- 
gery had gradually assumed much of the bur- 
den of the housekeeping. Most of the actual 
ordering of supplies was done by Sarah and old 
Kiley, the cross cook, but Margery went over 
the bills each week before they were given to 
her grandfather to pay, and she kept a general 
oversight over the kitchen. 

As she slipped one bill under a shell and 
took up another long list, she said to herself a 
little wearily that she was feeling tired. It 
was something of a task for a young house- 
keeper to have two guests, to see that they were 


178 MARGERT MORRIS 

happy and amused, and to provide entertain- 
ment for the other young people who made the 
big white cottage a sort of headquarters. Dick 
and Sam, Perry and Jack were always at hand, 
Katherine Endicott and Mary Benton, al- 
though they were older than Margery, were 
fond of dropping in, and there was a large 
group of other boys and girls who took it as a 
matter of course that all of their evenings and 
half of their days should be spent at the 
Morris’s. Mr. Morris had old-fashioned ideas 
of a lavish hospitality; guests must always be 
welcomed and refreshments served. 

“ Polly,” sighed Margery, checking up the 
items on the bill in her hand, “ don’t let me for- 
get to tell Sarah to order some lemons — Jack 
and Perry, and Mary Benton and all that older 
crowd want to come here to dance this even- 
ing — the club-house is being used for a men’s 
smoker. Besides, our floor is good, you know. 
As J ack and Perry are coming, I suppose that 
we had better ask Sam and Dick.” 

Polly looked up from her book. “ Yes, in- 
deed,” she said cheerfully, “ I’ll nudge you up 
about the lemons. You really ought to read 
this, Margie. It is ever so interesting.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 179 

“ What is so interesting? ” asked Mr. 
Morris. 

“ This life of Louisa Alcott — it’s all about 
her life in Concord, and the fun she had with 
her sisters, and the awful struggles her family 
had when they were so poor. I’d love to see 
their old house. Some day when I can per- 
suade father and mother to come up here in 
the car I want to go around to see all the places 
where the famous writers lived and the places 
they wrote about. Just as we went to see 
Hawthorne’s home, and the House of the Seven 
Gables yesterday.” 

Mr. Morris took off his glasses. “ Well, 
you know, I have been thinking out some plans. 
Yesterday’s little trip seemed such a success, I 
wonder if it wouldn’t be a good thing to extend 
it a little. We might take our car and Mrs. 
Endicott’s, and then if Mrs. Endicott is will- 
ing to go along to chaperone you, you might 
run down to Boston and Concord, and then 
across the state to the Berkshires. There are 
literary shrines there, too — and it is a beautiful 
trip. I won’t be able to go with you — but I 
have an idea that I might be able to persuade 
Mrs. Endicott to go.” 


i8o 


MARGERY MORRIS 


Esther put down her sewing. “ Wouldn’t 
it be wonderful! ” she cried, her dark eyes shin- 
ing. “ Think of seeing all those places! ” 

Margery said nothing, but she sighed with a 
certain sense of relief. It would seem very 
restful to her just to settle back in a corner 
of the car and go spinning over country roads, 
and not to have to think about humoring Kiley 
because Katherine or one of the boys had 
dropped in and had stayed for luncheon. 

“ Well, I think you girls can make your 
plans,” smiled Mr. Morris, putting on his 
glasses and picking up a book from the little 
table by his side. “ In fact the subject was 
mentioned last night, and Mrs. Morris seemed 
to be quite in favor of it.” 

Polly and Esther went off to write home 
letters, and Margery, when her accounts were 
done at last, perched on the arm of her 
grandfather’s chair, a sheaf of papers in her 
hand. 

“ It was like you, grandpapa dear,” she said 
affectionately, “ to have a plan like this up your 
sleeve. I hope that you will have a good rest 
while we are away. I’m afraid that we’re too 
noisy — it’s hard not to be noisy with a whole 


AND PLAIN JANE 181 

crowd of boys and girls running in and out all 
the time.” 

“ I hope that all these boys and girls aren’t 
tiring you out, dear. Sometimes I wish that 
we had chosen a quieter place for the summer.” 

Margery stoutly denied the possibility of be- 
ing tired. “ No, indeed,” she insisted. “ Here 
are the bills — you can look them over as soon 
as you have time. Let me see who will go on 
our trip — Aunt Kate, and Polly, Esther and I, 
and possibly Katherine. And the four boys 
of course. I wonder if Jane would go.” 

“ You might ask her,” Mr. Morris sug- 
gested. “ It certainly wouldn’t do any harm 
to ask her. Explain to her where you are go- 
ing, and what your ideas are for the trip.” 

“ I do wish that Jane would be sensible,” 
remarked Margery, pensively picking a dead 
leaf from the geranium in the big stone vase on 
the veranda balustrade. 

“ Well, don’t try to influence her too much, 
dear. Don’t interfere. I think that would-be 
peace-makers are often responsible for a lot of 
mischief. And really, it is rather an imperti- 
nence on their parts to interfere the way that 
they do. And too often their idea is simply to 


182 


MARGERT MORRIS 


urge the weaker vessel to give in — and then 
they pat themselves on the back and think what 
fine people they are. There is such a thing as 
justice and the real peace-maker acts first in 
accord with that.” 

Margery stood up. “ Don’t be afraid, 
grandpapa,” she laughed. “ I won’t go lectur- 
ing Jane, and poking into things. But now 
I must go down and pose for that portrait. 
And while I am there I will put the matter of 
the trip before her — very gently,” she added 
with another laugh. 

Polly and Esther were deep in home letters. 
Marges paused to speak a few minutes, then 
after she had dressed in her green frock and 
found her big hat where Sarah had put it too 
carefully away, she went down to Buttercup 
Cottage. 

“ Oh, Margery! ” Jane came running to the 
door enveloped in a long gingham apron. “ I 
was going to send you word — oh, dear, I am 
ever so sorry, but I forgot! I won’t be able 
to paint you this morning. Cousin Willy is 
going to have some people in to tea this even- 
ing, and I have to make a cake.” 

Margery hesitated. She realized that she 


AND PLAIN JANE 183 

felt tired and had been looking forward to the 
quiet hour spent posing in Jane’s little parlor. 
If she went home now, she would be certain to 
be pressed into a tennis game or a trip to the 
village, and with that pride which makes young 
people hate to admit that they are less strong 
and energetic than their mates, she dreaded 
having to decline and make explanations. 

“ Can’t I do something to help you? ” 

Jane caught a certain wistfulness in her 
tone. “ Yes, indeed — you might seed raisins. 
I’d love to have you come in and talk to me, 
anyway.” 

The little kitchen was especially charming 
that morning with a bed of fragrant stocks 
blooming under the window and filling the 
room with their sweetness, and with the sun- 
shine streaming in to turn the shining pots and 
pans to silver. A sea-breeze came gently 
through the open back door and ruffled the 
spotless blue and white muslin Jane had hung 
over window and cupboard shelves. Margery, 
enveloped in a big apron, perched on a stool 
and seeded raisins while Jane beat eggs. 
Cousin Willy, who was making ice-cream, 
bustled about, full of stories about Margery’s 


1 84 MARGERT MORRIS 

mother when she was Elizabeth Marshall, the 
terror and pet of the boarding-school which 
Cousin Willy and Mrs. Endicott, and Jane’s 
mother as well, had all attended. Margery 
found it all very homelike and restful, and the 
fact that her mother and Jane’s had been 
schoolgirl friends, drew Jane closer in her 
affections. 

“ It’s ever so nice having school-friends, isn’t 
it? ” she commented, eating a raisin as reward 
for her labors. “ You enjoy them when you’re 
young and then you enjoy them when you’re 
older and can look back on things. There are 
lots of little incidents that Polly and I will 
laugh over some day together, I know. By the 
way, Jane, won’t you come on a motor trip 
with us if we can get it up? ” 

Jane’s face brightened. “A motor trip, oh, 
how perfect! Where to? ” 

“ It’s grandpapa’s idea — we enjoyed going 
down to Salem so much the other day and 
Polly has talked so much about Hawthorne 
ever since that he thought it would be a good 
plan for us to go to see the homes of a lot of 
the famous old writers. To go to Concord 
and see Louisa Alcott’s home, and so forth 


AND PLAIN JANE 185 

and so on. And then from there we will go on 
to the Berkshires. It would be such fun to 
have you — do come! We’d be gone for about 
a week, I imagine. We won’t have any set 
time though, for we won’t have to hurry. Do 
come — they say the Berkshires are perfectly 
beautiful, and you ought to enjoy them.” 

“ Yes, it would be delightful,” smiled Cousin 
Willy, foreseeing pleasure for Jane in the 
plan. 

“ It would be fun,” agreed Jane, pouring a 
stiff froth of eggs into a bowl. “ Who would 
go, Margery — you and Polly and Esther and 
I, and your grandfather? ” 

“ Oh, no, grandpapa couldn’t go. He can’t 
stand long rides like that. Aunt Kate would 
have to chaperone us. And we wouldn’t want 
to leave Dick and Sam out, of course. And 
Perry would have to go along to run Aunt 
Kate’s car. We are going to take the two 
cars — just as we did yesterday — so as to have 
plenty of room. It gets so tiresome when peo- 
ple are all crowded into one car, and have to 
sit on the little side-seats all day, especially 
over mountain roads.” 

“ Oh,” said Jane a little flatly. “ Oh.” 


1 86 


MARGERY MORRIS 


She went to the refrigerator and got out a 
small pitcher of cream. “ I don’t see how,” 
she began, coming back into the kitchen. 

“ Oh, do come, Jane,” urged Margery. “ It 
would be the life and soul of the party to have 
you. We’d all enjoy it so much more if you 
were to come.” 

“ I don’t see how I can possibly come,” Jane 
went on firmly, although her lips trembled a 
little. “ It would make me miss a whole week 
of the art class, and then when I got back I 
wouldn’t feel a bit like settling down and going 
to work.” 

“ Now, Jane,” remonstrated Cousin Willy. 

“ I’d simply love to go, Margery, and you’re 
a dear to think of asking me — but I simply 
couldn’t. Cousin Willy,” Jane added quickly 
as Margery started to make a renewed plea — 
“ there isn’t enough cream here — I’ll have to 
go down cellar for some more.” 

She ran out of the room. 

“ Jane does want to go,” Margery declared 
in a low voice to Cousin Willy. “ She shows 
that she wants to go. She’s backing out just 
because the Watkins boys are going. Just the 
way she did yesterday. The boys are such 


AND PLAIN JANE 187 

nice boys — I should think that Jane would see 
that.” 

However Cousin Willy might criticize Jane 
herself, she was always loyally ready to take 
up the cudgels if anyone else attacked her. 

“ The boys being nice have nothing to do 
with the case,” she declared. “ In time it will, 
but not now. You can’t expect a girl of 
Jane’s reserve and sensitiveness to accept two 
strange boys on the intimate plane of brothers 
right away. Why, it is less than six weeks 
since her mother married. Another type of 
girl might be influenced by the boys’ good 
looks and their social popularity, and by the 
fact that they have plenty of money and are 
in a position to pay her many pleasant little 
attentions. But Jane is not the self-seeking 
type of girl. Her mother’s marriage was a 
shock and disappointment to her, and it will 
take her a little while to get used to the idea 
of it. When she does accept those boys as her 
brothers and Mr. Watkins as father, she will 
be unfailingly loyal. All the more loyal be- 
cause she has been slow.” 

" Yes,” Margery agreed thoughtfully. “ I 
suppose that is so.” 


1 88 


MARGERT MORRIS 


“ Personally, I prefer the sensitive, reserved 
people, — they are apt to be more faithful. But 
don’t worry about J ane and the Watkins boys. 
Time and circumstances are certain to do their 
work. It may be soon or it may be later. 
Patience isn’t a virtue that you young people 
like to hear much about — but I have come to 
have great faith in patience. It always re- 
wards me.” 

Margery laughed and got down from her 
stool. “ Yes,” she said. “Patience does seem 
so stodgy.” 

On her way home Margery met little An- 
drew Watkins clambering up over the rocks, a 
bucket in his hand. 

“Andy-boy, what have you got there? ” she 
hailed him. 

“ Star-fish,” breathed Andy, through the 
gaps left by his missing front teeth. 

Margery loved children, and had an especial 
knack with small boys. “ Oh, they are fine,” 
she said enthusiastically, bending over the 
bucket. “ I’ll have to show you how to dry 
them some day. Have you any sea-urchins 
yet?” 

“ Margery — can’t I go home with you for 


AND PLAIN JANE 189 

luncheon? Aunt Kate is going to a party in 
Winchester — and I don’t like it when she is 
away. Please, Margie — I want to come with 
you.” 

Margery hesitated. She hated to refuse the 
child, but if Kiley were not in a good humor, 
she might have some trouble to make peace in 
the kitchen. 

“All right, chick,” she said at last, “ come 
along.” 

As they neared the house a melancholy 
me-owing in a tree whose branches spread 
above their heads made them look up. 

“ Oh, Andy,” Margery exclaimed, “ it’s 
Kiley’s cat! It’s Patti! If you can get it 
down Kiley will certainly be willing for you to 
stay for luncheon. She adores that kitten!” 

“All right. I’ll get it — just watch me! ” 

He caught hold of a lower branch and tried 
to swing himself up into the tree. “ Mar- 
gery ! ” he panted after several ineffectual ef- 
forts, “ I — I can’t do it — you will have to 
boost me.” 

Margery boosted with energy, and Andrew, 
red-faced and breathless, landed in the tree. 
“ That cat’s pretty high up,” he announced. 


MARGERT MORRIS 


190 

sitting astride a big branch and looking up 
into the tree. “ I’ll have to climb up after it.” 

Margery watched him anxiously as he 
started to clamber up the big trunk. “ Do be 
careful, Andy — don’t try to do it if you think 
it isn’t safe. Oh, do be careful! ” 

There was a sound of ripping cloth and An- 
drew slipped and slid downward a few inches. 
The kitten me-owed with renewed vigor. 

“ Oh, Andy — do be careful! Oh, Andy, 
come down.” 

“You stand ready, and catch me if I fall. 
I’ll get that cat — just watch me.” 

“Andrew — come down.” Margery’s voice 
was stern. 

No answer from above, and Margery stood 
anxiously waiting. What a goose she had 
been, she thought, to let Andrew try to get that 
cat! 

“Andrew!” Her tone was commanding 
now. “ Come down this instant! ” 

“ I can’t reach it, Margery,” Andrew’s voice 
floated down. “ I’ll have to climb higher.” 

“ Oh, Andy, don’t ! ” Margery beseeched 
him. 

“ What’s the matter, Margery — what are 


AND PLAIN JANE 19 1 

you so excited about? ” asked some one back of 
her. 

She turned. “ Oh, Perry — I’m so glad to 
see you! I sent Andy up that tree to get 
Kiley’s kitten, and now I’m scared to death! 
I’m so afraid he’ll fall! Can’t you make him 
come down? He doesn’t obey me.” 

“Andrew, come down.” Perry was per- 
emptory. “ I’ll get it.” 

Rather unwillingly Andrew scrambled down. 
He had learned not to disobey his big brother. 
With a heroic disregard of white flannel 
trousers and white sweater, Perry drew him- 
self up into the tree. 

“ The poor little beast was caught in a crotch 
of the branches and couldn’t move,” said Perry 
as he dropped a little bundle of quivering fur 
into Margery’s waiting hands. “ I suppose a 
dog chased it and it took refuge up the tree. 
What did you say its name is? ” 

“ It was originally named Cutie, but Polly 
called it Patti because of its 4 vocal accom- 
plishments,’ she says. Hereafter I’m going to 
call it 4 Jane.’ ” 

“Why — because it scratches,” and Perry 
ruefully rubbed a red line on his hand. 


192 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“ No, because it got up a tree and couldn’t 
get down.” 

“ Hmm .” 

“ You helped this Jane down out of the 
tree — perhaps you’ll have to help the other.” 

With a laugh and a wave of her hand, Mar- 
gery disappeared through a gap in the hedge. 





CHAPTER XIV 


A LITERARY PILGRIMAGE 

“ These cobblestones,” remarked Mrs. En- 
dicott as the car bounced over a piece of rough 
paving, “ remind me of the old English writer 
who visited here in Boston in 1699, and w^ote 
that * the buildings, like the women, are erect 
and handsome, and the streets, like the hearts 
of the male inhabitants, are paved with 
pebbles/ ” 

Mrs. Endicott, Margery and Polly, Esther 
and Katherine, as well as the four boys, had 
started that morning for the talked-of motor 
trip. The first stop was in Boston. They had 
decided, although there was much that they 
wanted to see there, not to linger more than 
was necessary to make some purchases for the 
trip, but to go straight to Concord and then on 
to the Berkshires. Cambridge they would 
visit on the way home, or save for a short trip 
some other time. 


193 


194 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“ We can’t do everything at once,” Polly 
sighed regretfully as they left Boston. “ But 
I do hate having to miss anything.” 

“ Where shall we go first here? ” asked Mrs. 
Endicott as they drew near to Concord. 
“ Shall we be historical or literary? ” she went 
on as no one answered. 

“ Historical,” said Perry, who was running 
the car. 

“ Literary,” cried Polly. 

“ Don’t let’s be either,” suggested Jack. 
“ Let’s get something to eat.” 

“ Let’s go first to the bridge,” said Mar- 
gery, paying no attention to Jack. “ That 
seems the place we ought to want to see 
most.” 

She stood up and waved to the other car 
following j.ust far enough behind to escape the 
dust, calling, “ Bridge! Bridge! ” 

Sam waved in answer and she sat down 
again. 

“ Someone said that this is the spot where 
America altered her destiny,” observed Mrs. 
Endicott as the car stopped at the bridge and 
they all got out by the weathered granite 
monument bearing the proud inscription com- 


AND PLAIN JANE 195 

memorating the first forcible resistance in the 
Revolutionary war. It was all very still and 
peaceful, the river flowed along placidly, the 
flickering shadows of the trees softened the 
grim outlines of the granite shaft and made 
mysterious the bronze figure of French’s noble 
Minuteman at the opposite end of the bridge. 
Quietly Margery slipped away from the others 
and crossing the bridge stood before the statue. 
Something in the handsome, boyish face fasci- 
nated her. Gazing at it thoughtfully, she tried 
to imagine that long-ago day when the Minute- 
man had stood there in battle, facing the Brit- 
ish regulars drawn up on the opposite side of 
the bridge, and to realize something of what 
that day had meant in the history of the two 
nations. 

“ Why so pensive, Margie? ” asked Dick, 
who had slipped away from the others to join 
her. “ What are you dreaming about? ” 

“ Oh, Dick, isn’t he wonderful? ” 

Dick looked up at the statue. “ Yes,” he 
said in the abrupt manner he had whenever he 
was moved. “ He isn’t so bad.” 

“ Oh, Dick,” Margery objected. “ What a 
way to put it. Oh, here come the others! ” 


196 MARGERY MORRIS 

But Dick did not hear her. Half to him- 
self, half aloud he was repeating: 

4 4 ‘And there the embattled farmers stood, 

And fired the shot heard round the world.’ ” 

“What’s that?” asked Jack, coming up. 
“ What are you muttering about, Dick? ” 

Dick was disgusted. “ There’s no reverence 
about these people, Margery,” he said. “ Come 
on, let’s go and look at the graves of the Brit- 
ish soldiers.” 

“ Now then, we’ve been historical,” said Mrs. 
Endicott as at last they drew themselves re- 
luctantly away from the river and the bridge, 
“ so it’s time to be literary. We’ll go and visit 
some of our literary shrines. Suppose we 
visit Emerson’s home first.” 

Across a gently sloping field to the right, as 
she spoke, there opened up the view of a white 
house behind a line of lofty pine and chestnut 
trees. It stood close to the road behind an- 
other line of trees. 

“ Oh, isn’t that the place? ” cried Esther, 
her attention seized by its dignity and air of 
refinement. 

“ That’s the Emerson house,” said Mrs. 


AND PLAIN JANE 197 

Endicott. “ We’ll stop in front of it — I don’t 
know whether we can go in or not.” 

In front of the house Mrs. Endicott told 
them something of the gentle sage who had 
lived there. Except Polly and Perry none of 
the young people had read any of Emerson’s 
writings beyond a poem or two, but as Mrs. 
Endicott told the story of his fatherless boy- 
hood and his youthful fight with the grim wolf 
of dire poverty, his struggles as a boy of nine- 
teen to teach in a fashionable young ladies’ 
boarding-school where his pupils, some of them 
older than himself, cruelly used to ask him for 
a holiday on election day, “ while he voted,” 
well aware that he was a minor, they were fired 
with a desire to know him through his works. 
Most interesting of all to the girls was to learn 
of his kindness to the Alcott family and of his 
way of leaving money for them under a book 
on the table or behind a candlestick on the 
mantle. 

“ And he really was the original of Mr. Law- 
rence in 4 Little Women,’ Aunt Kate? Are 
you sure?” asked Margery as they went on 
their way again. 

“ Quite,” said Mrs. Endicott with a laugh. 


198 MARGERT MORRIS 

The road wound gently over a little rise and 
with a sweep to the left; there in a bay of the 
highway, stood a brown house behind two 
huge elms, a large, homelike old-fashioned 
house. 

“ Oh,” cried Polly, as they came near, 
“ there it is — there’s the Orchard House — I 
know it from the pictures.” 

“ We’ll have to get out and go in here,” said 
Mrs. Endicott. “ The house is open to 
visitors.” 

“ It looks just like the place you would want 
the ‘ Little Women ’ and Louisa Alcott to live 
in,” remarked Margery as they walked up the 
path. “ It’s so homey.” 

They lingered outside under the big elms be- 
fore they went into the house. Jack and 
Perry had never read Miss Alcott’s books, and 
only Polly and Mrs. Endicott knew much 
about the woman herself, brave, witty and 
tender, her life as interesting as anything 
she wrote. 

Between Polly and Mrs. Endicott a fair 
sketch of her was pieced together ; the story of 
her youthful poverty, the long hard struggle 
which never quenched her sense of fun or made 


AND PLAIN JANE 199 

her bitter, and then the final coming of suc- 
cess and fame. 

4 4 The part I always loved best about her life 
was when she grew so famous that a woman 
came and collected the grasshoppers out of her 
front yard as souvenirs,” remarked Polly, one 
foot on the doorstep. 

“And I always liked the time when she wrote 
that she was in a 4 vortex of debts, dishpans 
and depression,’ ” answered Mrs. Endicott. 
44 Shall we go in now? ” 

44 Do you know, Polly,” said Margery as 
they followed into the house, 44 it does me 
good to think about people like Miss Alcott, 
who have been so brave and plucky, and have 
fought against such tremendous odds, — and 
have succeeded in the end.” 

Bravery in any form always appealed to 
Margery. As she wandered through the old 
house she grew silent and thoughtful ; her own 
life had been so easy, so happy, she suddenly 
realized, so different from what many other 
girls had to endure, and she wondered if real 
trouble came to her if she would have the cour- 
age to face it. 

44 What’s the matter?” asked Dick. 44 You’ve 


200 


MARGERY MORRIS 


stared at the flowers painted on that door- 
panel for five minutes, and I don’t believe you 
have seen one of them.” 

Margery roused herself with a laugh, and 
joined the others in trying to picture the four 
young heroines of “ Little Women ” in the 
place of its setting. 

“ It’s very inspirational,” observed Mrs. 
Endicott with a sigh, as they left the house at 
last, and strolled under the elms back to the 
cars. “ It really is inspirational to see the 
home of a woman who had such patience, such 
an unwavering purpose in developing her 
talents, and who worked so hard under diffi- 
culties, and who had at the same time so much 
family feeling, and neighborliness, and un- 
grudging generosity.” 

“ It will seem flat,” said Polly, as she climbed 
into the car with a wistful backward look at 
the homelike old house under the elms, “ to 
have just Hawthorne’s house to look at — after 
this.” 

“ Why, Polly,” laughed Perry, “ you’re go- 
ing back on your beloved Hawthorne!” 

“ Cheer up, Polly,” comforted Dick, who 
was deep in a guide-book. “ Louisa Alcott 


AND PLAIN JANE 201 

lived in Hawthorne’s house before he did. 
That was before they moved to the Orchard 
House. So brace up and try to bear it.” 

“ You are talking about Wayside,” an- 
swered Polly, who also had a guide-book. 
“ But he lived at the Manse, too.” 

They visited the Manse and Wayside, then 
down to Sleepy Hollow, the famous, beautiful 
cemetery where are the graves of the three 
neighbors, Emerson, Hawthorne and Louisa 
Alcott. 

“ Now we mustn’t forget Walden, and to 
see the cairn by the lake to mark the spot where 
Thoreau had his little hut, and studied nature,” 
suggested Mrs. Endicott. 

“ I don’t like the sound of Thoreau,” ob- 
jected Margery. “ He sounds so old and 
whiskery. Of course we have to study about 
him in school — but that’s all that I want to 
have to know about him.” 

“ Evidently you don’t admire whiskers, 
Margery,” smiled Perry. “ But Thoreau 
wasn’t old — he was quite young when he died. 
And he must have been a lively, amusing per- 
son to know. After he left college he tried to 
teach school — he wouldn’t whip his scholars 


202 


MARGERT MORRIS 


often enough, so the school-board objected. 
Then he whipped half a dozen of the young- 
sters on the same day, to please the school- 
board, and that evening sent in his resigna- 
tion/’ 

“And,” added Mrs. Endicott, “ when his 
first book was printed, only two hundred and 
thirteen volumes sold out of the thousand that 
were printed. So Thoreau — he was little 
more than a boy then — brought all the unsold 
copies home in a wheelbarrow, and wrote in 
his diary, ‘ I have a library of nearly nine hun- 
dred volumes, over seven hundred of which I 
wrote myself.’ I should like to have known a 
boy who could take a disappointment as gayly 
as that.” 

Concord said good-bye to at last, Margery 
thoroughly enjoyed the trip across the state to 
the Berkshire Mountains. The weather was 
perfect, the cars ran well, and they had few 
punctures, and the little company was gay and 
good-natured. They found fun in every- 
thing; and Esther and Jack added to their 
amusement by collecting the queer old epitaphs 
to be found on the tombstones in the old moun- 
tain cemeteries. 


AND PLAIN JANE 203 

“ Here’s a lovely one,” cried Esther, coming 
back from an expedition into a lonely grave- 
yard. “ Just listen to this, Margery — it ought 
to interest you, as it’s evidently written about 
some one named Margaret. Listen: 

“ ‘Here lies Mag. 

No brag. 

Both fair 
And wise.’ ” 

“ I like the one you got this morning,” added 
Polly. “ The one about Deacon Wadsworth.” 

“ Oh, you mean this one,” said Esther, con- 
sulting her note-book. “ Here it is: 

“ ‘ Reader, expect the day that shall reveal 
to an assembled world the piety and virtues of 
Deacon James Wadsworth.’ ” 

“ The one, ‘ Her thinkings and achings are 
o’er,’ particularly appeals to me,” observed 
Jack. “And I should think that it would ap- 
peal to you ladies who ride in the car that 
Perry is driving. You certainly do some hard 
thinking when he whirls round corners, and 
your bones ache from the bumps you get. He 
has a genius for finding hills and hollows in the 
road.” 


204 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“ That’s a base libel,” cried Polly and Mar- 
gery together. “ Perry is a splendid driver! ” 

Perry was grateful. “ Thank you, ladies,” 
he said, and missed running over a dog by a 
hair’s breadth, to the unaffected delight of his 
brother. 

Margery enjoyed the trip across the country 
so much that she was sorry when they finally 
reached Lenox, and settled down at the hotel 
there for a couple of days’ stay. But big 
fashionable hotels were more of a novelty to 
Esther and Polly, and they were never tired of 
watching the people in the dining-room and 
the corridors, and of admiring the pretty 
women and handsome dresses. It was a de- 
light to them, too, to wander about the near-by 
countryside, through shady, moss-carpeted 
woods, or upon the roads high among the hills 
overlooking miles of peaceful valley and moun- 
tain. The great estates interested them, and 
they were never weary of commenting upon 
the varieties of architecture shown — the Swiss 
chalets and Tudor castles, the Colonial man- 
sions and the turreted, minareted composite, 
distinguished in nothing but size. 

One morning, clear and crisp, with only a 


AND PLAIN JANE 205 

faint blue haze over the more distant moun- 
tains, they walked out to the site of the 44 Little 
Red House ” where Hawthorne had written 
the “ House of the Seven Gables.” The house 
itself had been burned down, but they man- 
aged, with the help of a little guide-book, to re- 
construct it in their imaginations. 

“And anyway,” said Polly, “ we can see the 
same view that he saw.” 

“ I don’t wonder that Hawthorne wrote to 
Longfellow from here that he was as happy as 
mortal could be,” remarked Mrs. Endicott, 
gazing off over the distant lake and Monument 
Mountain. “ It is all so beautiful and peace- 
ful that it makes one feel rather wistful. 
But,” she added with a smile, “ perhaps if I 
could stay here and rest, I would get to feeling 
that it was too peaceful and restful, as Haw- 
thorne himself finally did, and to say with that 
that I longed for 4 sea-breezes and dock-mud, 
and to tread pavements.’ ” 

Polly had brought the “ Wonder Book ” and 
44 Tanglewood Tales ” and she and Margery, 
with Dick, wandered off to one side, and sitting 
down on a log, read over the introductions and 
tried to remember that Eustace Bright of the 


206 


MARGERY MORRIS 


books was Hawthorne himself and that the 
children to whom the stories were told, Prim- 
rose, Sweet Fern, Clover and the rest, were 
the Hawthorne children and some of their 
young neighbors. 

“ The old boy seems to have been a regular 
guy with the kids,” remarked Jack elegantly, 
taking a seat on the log beside Margery. “ He 
flew kites with them, and went nutting with 

them, and skating — quite a sport, in fact.” 

“ Jack,” protested Polly, “y° u must be more 
respectful to the memory of the great man,” 
and the reading ended in one of the spirited 
disputes in which Polly and Jack were fond of 
indulging. 

Lenox was so beautiful that it was with real 
regret that the little party finally tore itself 
away. 

“ I love it at Wyanoke,” sighed Margery as 
she took her place in the car for the return trip, 
“ but I wish that I could stay here too! ” She 
leaned back in the seat and carefully adjusted 
her long silk dust-robe about her. “ Now 

then, ” she said, folding her hands in her lap, 
“ bring on your ‘ sea-breezes and dock-mud.’ ” 


CHAPTER XV 


WYAN0KE AGAIN 

The portrait of Margery was finished at 
last, and all the young people except Jack and 
Perry went to see it and declared it to be a 
remarkable work of genius. If Dick’s praise 
was more reserved, nobody paid any attention 
to that, for Dick was apt not to say very much. 

“ It doesn’t look very much like me, does it, 
Dick? ” asked Margery as she and Dick were 
canoeing one evening. “ Portraits are not al- 
ways expected to look like the people they are 
supposed to be, are they? ” 

Dick was non-committal. “ Well, I should 
say,” he answered, dipping his paddle, “ that 
this portrait looks rather more like a dollar-a- 
week-dish-washer than it does like the august 
lady who arrived from California last fall.” 

Margery laughed, relieved. Although she 
had singularly little vanity about her appear- 
207 


208 


MARGERT MORRIS 


ance she preferred not to think that she looked 
as Jane had represented her. She wished in- 
cidentally that Dick would stop teasing her 
about her scheme of money-making and about 
her first days in Renwyck’s Town. 

“ Wouldn’t you like to learn to paddle? ” 
queried Dick. “ I’ll teach you, if you’d like.” 

Margery acquiesced, and they put in to the 
club-house wharf that Margery might change 
her place to the bow, Dick always standing 
firmly to the rule that no one should change 
places in midstream in either the canoe or row- 
boat when he was there to prevent it. A 
paddle was put into Margery’s hand and they 
started up the bay again. It was twilight and 
there were few other craft out. A soft light 
lay over land and water and there was scarcely 
a sound beyond the faint gluck-gluck of their 
paddles dipping and the cry of a sleepy bird in 
the trees along the shore. Dick was silent, as 
he was always content to be if Margery were 
there to do the talking for him. Margery, too, 
was quiet, dreamily enjoying the long reflec- 
tions in the bay, and the misty purple out- 
lines of its surrounding rocks and dunes and 
stretches of pine woods. 


AND PLAIN JANE 209 

“ What’s the matter, Margery?” inquired 
Dick. “ You aren’t usually so speechless.” 

“ I — I was just enjoying it,” answered Mar- 
gery dreamily. “ I went over to Winchester 
with Jane to-day,” she went on, rousing her- 
self, “ to see the portrait hung in the studio. 
And do you know, Dick,” screwing around to 
address him, “ it made me wonder.” 

“ Whoa — there ! Steady in the bow ! How 
‘ wonder ’? ” 

“ I was thinking about her winning the prize. 
Of course, I want her to get it — but she was 
talking a lot about it, and I do wish that she 
wanted it for something else than what she 
does. You see, if she gets the prize it means 
an art scholarship in New York next winter, 
and with what little money she has she can 
go there and study, and then she wants to win 
a scholarship to study abroad.” 

“ Well, what’s wrong with that? Pretty 
good idea, it seems to me. Don’t dip your 
paddle so deep. And don’t wiggle so — we’ll 
have an upset.” 

“ Why, don’t you see, Dick,” answered Mar- 
gery, heroically trying not to turn round in the 
bow seat and face Dick as she talked. “ She 


210 


MARGERY MORRIS 


wants to get away from her stepfather and 
Marion — and everybody. That’s what makes 
me wonder if it’s right. She says if she is 
making her own way they can’t keep her home 
with them. And, somehow, I can’t help wish- 
ing that she were doing this just because she 
really loved the work — and not merely to get 
away from the Watkins. Papa and mamma 
knew several artists at home — real ones — and 
they seemed to think about their work and not 
just the triumphs it was going to bring them. 
They were very different from Jane in lots of 
ways.” 

“ I should think so,” agreed Dick, somewhat 
dryly. “Any art, I suppose, is like your 
friends — you have to love them for themselves 
alone, and not what you are going to get out 
of them. Sit still, Margery! I’m perfectly 
willing, of course, to save your fair young life, 
but I’d hate to get the polish on these shoes 
dimmed.” 

Margery laughed and turned her atten- 
tion to keeping still and managing her pad- 
dle. 

“ Did you know that Jack is to have a part 
in the play they are getting up at the club? ” 


21 I 


AND PLAIN JANE 

remarked Dick. “ Katherine engineered it. 
They’ve given him the part of a not overly- 
bright farm boy.” 

“ Yes — Katherine asked me to be in it. But 
grandpapa wouldn’t let me — he said I was 
getting too tired. So Mary Benton is to take 
that part.” 

“ Mary Benton wants to be careful, by the 
way, how she swims out so far,” Dick com- 
mented. “ She got used up to-day, and two 
of the fellows had to bring her in.” 

“ Oh, but Dick — she’s so wonderfully ath- 
letic.” 

“ She thinks she is,” returned Dick without 
enthusiasm. 

“ I was awfully disappointed about not be- 
ing in the play at first.” 

Dick looked at her keenly. “ I guess your 
grandfather is right,” he said. “ You do look 
a little tired. You girls have been going it 
pretty hard.” 

“ I must be,” sighed Margery. “ For I’m 
afraid that I’ve taken to imagining things 
lately.” 

They drew in by the club-house dock and 
Margery climbed out. As she turned toward 


212 


MARGERT MORRIS 


land she spied Jane sitting forlorn and lonely 
on a pile of life-preservers. 

“ Dear me, Jane,” she protested, “ you’ll 
take cold sitting there — where’s your sweater? 
Come on — Dick has to put the canoe up. 
There come Polly and Esther; they’ve been 
out in the other canoe with Sam. I wonder 
where they went — we didn’t see them when we 
went up the bay. Come on — we’ll all go up 
to the house and make fudge on the chafing- 
dish.” 

Jane got up obediently, and linked her arm 
with Margery’s. “ Oh, Margie,” she whis- 
pered, “ to-morrow we’ll know who has won 
the scholarship — I’m scared to death! ” 

“ Nonsense,” consoled Margery. “Besides, 
even if you don’t get it — you can try again 
for another. One swallow doesn’t make a 
summer.” 

Jane squeezed her arm. “ Margery,” she 
confided, “although I’m all scared and shaky — 
I do feel in my bones that I’m going to get it.” 

“ Your bones know,” said Margery gayly. 
“ So don’t get scared. There comes Dick. 
It’s getting chilly — and it will seem nice in the 
house this evening.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 213 

It did seem very “ nice ” in the big charm- 
ing living-room of the cottage. Sarah had 
made a small fire on the grate and got ready 
the materials for the fudge-making. Esther 
and Polly, together with Sam, came trooping 
in on the others’ heels and a few minutes later 
Jack and Perry arrived. 

“We saw the lights, and thought something 
was doing,” said Perry. “ But, perhaps,” 
with a deprecatory glance at his stepsister, 
“ we’re butting in, and we’d better vanish.” 

But Margery was firm. “ Oh, don’t go — 
you really mustn’t. Jane can’t drive away my 
friends! Besides, Jack is such an idiot that 
he’ll keep even Jane from being stiff and em- 
barrassed.” 

She waved her hand toward Jack, dancing in 
imitation of Pavlova and her Russian dancers, 
a yellow lamp-shade on his head and Mar- 
gery’s pink scarf draped about his waist as a 
ballet-skirt. 

“ This is it,” he cried, prancing airily around 
the room. “ They always look as though they 
had gone out barefoot and stepped on an eel, 
and didn’t like the feel of the thing.” 

“Jack!” cried Polly. “When they dance 


214 


MARGERT MORRIS 


so beautifully, too ! Come on, Perry — start up 
Twickenham Ferry.” 

But Dick had joined Jack and was dancing 
the same skittish steps with an absolutely un- 
moved gravity of countenance. 

“ Oh, aren’t they funny? ” cried Jane as 
Margery sat down on the davenport beside 
her. “ Do take a lick at Duck! ” 

“ Do, Marger} 7 ,” urged Sam. “ I suppose 
you mean, Jane, take a look at Dick — but 
Duck suits him better. Hello, Quack-quack. 
Come and sing, Duckie dear! ” 

“ ‘ It’s puzzling work — talking is,’ as the 
man in ‘ The Mill on the Floss ’ said,” re- 
marked Polly, sitting down on the other side 
of Jane. “At any rate with you around, Jane, 
it is. Come on, boys, we’re going to sing.” 

“ I’ll sing to you,” volunteered Jack, and 
keeping his balance on one foot as best he 
could, he stretched out his arms toward Jane, 
and warbled in a high falsetto: 

“My love for you is like the ocean! 

My love for you is like the sea ! 

My love for you is but a notion ” 

Jane flushed and looked embarrassed, and 


AND PLAIN JANE 215 

Perry scowled at his brother. With a final 
trill and frantic hop to keep his balance, Jack 
hastily finished his song: 

‘'My love for you is but a notion 
Beside my love for — me!” 

“A very modern love-song,” commented Mr. 
Morris, who had just come in the room. “Now 
let’s hear you sing Twickenham Ferry.” 

Sam sat down at the piano and they began 
Twickenham Ferry, their favorite song of the 
moment. 

“ Well, nothing went wrong to-night,” Mar- 
gery congratulated herself an hour or so later, 
as, the house quiet and the other girls asleep, 
she leaned out of her window for a final look at 
the moonlit bay. “And considering that things 
are rather strained between Jane and the Wat- 
kins boys, that was doing pretty well. I do 
wish Jane would be sensible.” 

Thoughtfully watching a yacht anchored in 
the bay below, she stopped and hummed a bar 
of Twickenham Ferry, the song that the young 
people had sung so much of late, and which all 
her life would recall to Margery youth and 
happiness and high hopes and moonlit summer 
seas. 


2l6 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“ ‘The moon is arising on Petersham Hill, 

And with love like a rose in the stern of the wherry, 
There’s danger in crossing to Twickenham Town,’ ” 

she sang softly to herself. 

The next afternoon as she followed the path 
across the rocks home from Buttercup Cottage, 
she was singing Twickenham Ferry at the top 
of her clear young voice. There was no one 
else about and she exulted in the sense of free- 
dom and of wide open spaces, the sound of the 
incoming tide beating against the rocks, and 
the tang of the damp salt air. 

“ ‘It ’s late as it is, and I haven ’t a penny, 

And how shall I get me to Twickenham Town ? ’ ’ 9 

she warbled, her head thrown back to let the 
wind blow through her curls. 

“ ‘She’d a rose in her bonnet, and oh, she looked 
sweet, 

As the little pink flower that grows in the wheat, 
With her cheeks like a rose and her lips like a 
cherry, 

And sure and you’re welcome to Twickenham 
Town,’ ” 

answered a big, boyish voice and Perry ap- 
peared round a point of the rocks. 


AND PLAIN JANE 217 

“ Where are you going? ” asked Margery. 

“ Down to the beach to get my canoe. I left 
it there when we were in bathing this morn- 
ing — and I’m going to take it round to the 
boat-house now. Come along, and I’ll take 
you for a paddle.” 

“ Many thanks, but I have to go home. 
Polly is taking her turn at a nap in the ham- 
mock, and Esther is writing letters. I just 
ran down to ask Jane to go to the dance and 
theatricals at the club to-morrow night. But 
she isn’t home yet, and her cousin seems rather 
worried.” 

Perry frowned. “ I suppose if you have 
Jane with you I won’t dare to go near the 
crowd — and Dick and Sam can have all the 
fun. It’s mighty pleasant to be the object of 
such disgust.” 

Margery heard the hurt beneath the boyish 
bravado and said quickly, “ She didn’t bite 
you the other night, Perry. And we would 
have missed you and Jack very much if 
you hadn’t been there. Besides, I can’t 
have Jane driving away all my danc- 
ing partners. I’m depending on you and 
Jack.” 


2l8 


MARGERY MORRIS 


Perry’s face cleared. “All right, save the 
alternate dances for me.” 

Margery laughed again, a little embarrassed. 
“ Gracious — I’m not going to dance every 
dance with you! ” 

Perry laughed, too. “No, I suppose I’d 
have to throw Dick off the dock to get them 
all.” 

“ Oh, dear,” Margery sighed, her face cloud- 
ing. “ I do wish that Jane would be sensible 
and that everything would be nice and peace- 
ful.” 

“ Cheer up ! My lovely young sister will 
sprain her ankle or stub her toe on the railroad 
track just as a great express train comes 
pounding along. Sir Perry to the rescue! 
With a mighty shout I’ll rush in and save the 
lady from under the very cow-catcher. Re- 
sults? Tears, fainting, and stepbrothers ele- 
vated to a high and lofty state.” 

Margery laughed and went on her way down 
the hill toward home. 


CHAPTER XVI 


“ what's the matter? ” 

Perry clambered down over the rocks to- 
ward the spot where he had beached his canoe. 
Suddenly he stopped and looked about him; 
he thought that he heard sobbing. A foggy 
wind blew in from the sea, and beach and rocks 
were deserted. The children usually to be 
found digging in the sand, making sand-forts 
or rows of marvellous sand-cakes, were absent 
and he could see no one but a young naturalist 
collecting seaweed in the little pools left in 
the rocks by the retreating tide. 

He paused to look at the boy’s collection. 
“ Going to dry them? ” he asked. “ I used 
to have a lot of cards of different kinds of sea- 
weed.” 

At the foot of the rocks he stopped and 
turned back; he was sure that he heard sobbing, 
pitiful sobbing like a hurt child. 

“ There is somebody crying — over there by 
219 


220 MARGERY MORRIS 

that rock! Some child has fallen and hurt 
itself.” 

He ran back, jumping over the pools in the 
rocks, slipped on some seaweed, almost fell, 
recovered himself and went on. 

“ Great Scott! Jane? What’s the matter? 
Is anything wrong? Has any — has any bad 
news come from father — and your mother in 
Europe? ” 

Jane raised tear-brimmed eyes. “ N-noth- 
ing,” she faltered. 

Perry crouched down beside her. “ Oh, 
yes, there is,” he insisted. 

Jane gulped and made a pathetic attempt to 
restrain her flood of tears with a wet wad of 
handkerchief. 

“ N-nothing’s the matter,” she repeated, 
with another dab at her eyes and a long gasp- 
ing breath. 

Perry pulled a handkerchief out of the 
pocket of his sweater and offered it to her. 
“ I used it as a dust-rag to dust off the seat in 
the launch for Aunt Kate,” he said apologetic- 
ally. 

J ane took it mechanically, dazed by her vio- 
lent weeping. 


AND PLAIN JANE 221 

“ Now then,” said Perry, as Jane wiped her 
eyes, “ what’s the matter? ” 

“ It’s nothing — just something about me.” 
With a rush of sobs Jane’s head went down on 
her knees again. 

Relieved that no calamity had happened to 
the travellers, Perry stood up. What could he 
do, he thought miserably, with this weeping 
girl? He couldn’t go away and leave her! 
On the other hand, it was getting foggier every 
minute, and he did not enjoy the idea of 
taking the canoe around the long point of 
rocks in a heavy mist. He wished that 
Margery had come with him — she would 
know what to do. Or, if he only had Jack 
with him — or anybody, he finished hope- 
lessly. 

“ See here,” he began abruptly, “ you’ll have 
pneumonia if you stay here. It’s getting 
damper and damper every minute. Come 
on — I’m going to take my canoe around to the 
boat-house. Come along, and we can talk 
just as well as here.” 

He put a big strong hand under Jane’s 
elbow and raised her to her feet before she 
knew what had happened. Pulling off his 


222 


MARGERT MORRIS 


heavy sweater, he threw it round her shoulders. 
“Now come on,” he commanded. 

Bewildered, Jane obeyed. She was too 
tired and unhappy to care what happened and 
only knew that there was something cheering 
in Perry’s presence and reassuring in his big, 
booming voice. She was chilled, too, and the 
warm sweater was comfortable. 

As steadied by Perry’s hand she climbed 
over the rocks she grew more composed and 
her pride awoke. Pulling back, she mur- 
mured that she was all right now and would 
go back to the house. But as she pulled 
one way, Perry pulled harder toward the 
canoe. 

“ No,” he insisted. “ Come with me and 
tell me what the trouble is.” 

“ But really,” protested Jane, “ I want to 
go back to the house ! ” 

Perry’s only answer was to hold her arm 
more firmly and half pull, half push her for- 
ward. 

Proudly, Jane choked back her tears, and 
with no further protest quietly allowed herself 
to be helped into the canoe. She was very 
white, but she had obtained some degree of 



SHE WAS TOO TIRED AND UNHAPPY TO CARE WHAT HAPPENED 
















. 







































































































































*• 















AND PLAIN JANE 223 

composure. Perry noted the change with 
relief. 

“ Now then,” he ordered, as he pushed off, 
“ tell me what under the sun’s the matter? ” 

Jane looked at him, and drew several long, 
heaving breaths without answering. 

“ What did I get myself into this mess for?” 
thought Perry in consternation. “ Great 
Scott, is she going to turn on the weeps 
again? ” 

He dipped his paddle and turned the canoe 
toward the open water. 

But Jane had no intentions of bursting into 
tears again. She was far too proud and shy 
to display her emotion to another in this 
fashion. 

“ It’s really nothing at all important,” she 
said quietly, dabbling her hand in the water. 
“ I had a piece of news that upset me — that’s 
all.” 

Perry bent to his paddle again and the canoe 
flew through the water. 

“ I have been trying for a prize at the art 
school,” Jane went on, feeling that perhaps 
more explanations were needed, “ and I heard 
to-day that I’ve lost it.” 


224 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“ Is that all — good-night ! It’s only one 
prize, and you’ll win dozens yet! ” 

Jane smiled wearily, and Perry had his at- 
tention taken by the canoe for the next few 
minutes. They were going through rough 
water. “ There,” he said at last, “ now that 
we’re in the bay it will be easier going. 
You’re a good little sport not to be scared by 
that rough bit at the end of the rocks,” and he 
looked at J ane with a sudden new admiration, 
in spite of the fact that her features had be- 
come almost obliterated by her heavy weeping. 
“ Most of the girls get scared to death if the 
waves wabble a little — all except Polly and 
Margery. But, I say,” going back to the sub- 
ject of the prize with more interest than he had 
shown before, “ just losing one prize isn’t any- 
thing. Why, you’ll win a dozen yet! ” 

Jane hesitated. “ It isn’t only that,” she 
began. 

“ I don’t see how you ever managed to paint 
at all,” Perry interrupted her, “ with all the 
crowd piling in every time Margery went to 
you to pose.” 

“ It wasn’t only that,” Jane said honestly. 
“ You see, going over in the trolley to-day, I 


AND PLAIN JANE 225 

heard ” she stopped, and again Perry, 

panic-stricken, wondered if she were going to 
“ turn on the weeps.” 

“ You see,” Jane went on after a minute, 
impelled by the longing for sympathy to con- 
fide in him, besides, there was a certain human- 
ness about Perry that influenced her in spite 
of herself. “ It isn’t only that I’ve lost the 
prize — although I’m sorry on Margery’s ac- 
count, after she has posed for me so — she’s 
really been awfully sweet about it ! But what 
makes me feel bad is that coming home in the 
trolley car Mr. Hodge and another artist were 
talking back of me and I couldn’t help hearing 
what they were saying. They were talking 
about me.” 

She stopped and Perry drew in near the 
club-house wharf. “ Want to get out? ” he 
asked. “ Or shall we go up the bay — the fog 
isn’t so bad there.” 

Jane hesitated, and Perry took matters into 
his own hands. He had the feeling that it was 
now or never if he was to accomplish the de- 
sired friendship with his stepsister. “Not that 
I care a whoop,” he said proudly to himself, 
“ but it will please father.” 


226 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“ We’ll go up the bay,” he announced firmly 
to Jane. “ Now go on and tell me the rest.” 

“ They were talking about the people who 
had talent — and about the ones who hadn’t.” 

“ Well,” commented Perry, “ I don’t see 
why that should upset you.” 

Jane drew a long breath. “ Great Scott! 
What did I ask her that for? ” bemoaned Perry 
to himself. “ Now she’s going to cry again! ” 
He dipped his paddle so deep that he sent a 
shower of silvery drops over the canoe. 

Jane laughed a little, and went on. “ They 
said that the people who had real talent are al- 
ways happy to a certain extent — no matter 
what life brings them — because they always 
have their work and talent to console them, but 
that to the people with just a little talent it’s 
certainly a long, heartrending climb.” 

“ Oh, I see — I suppose they mentioned your 
name once or twice — very kind of them, I’m 
sure.” 

J ane smiled at his dry tone. “ They men- 
tioned me quite a little — among the latter 
cases,” she said, her sense of humor beginning 
to assert itself. “ In fact they used me as text 
and sermon.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 227 

Perry laughed. Jane really wasn’t so bad 
after all, he concluded, even if she was cranky. 
“ But why do you pay any attention to what 
that old geezer says ? He doesn’t know every- 
thing. Why, since the beginning of time great 
geniuses have been unappreciated! That’s 
part of the game.” 

Jane raised her eyes and faced the truth. 
“ But you see, I know he’s right. I’ve been 
feeling it myself lately.” 

“ Hmmm,” remarked Perry, judicially, not 
knowing what else to say. 

He laid his paddle across his knees and let 
the canoe drift. The salt mist was gradually 
creeping in around them and as though far 
away they could hear the ringing of the fog- 
bell at the mouth of the bay. There were no 
other boats, and shut in by the fog, they both 
felt a curious sense of intimacy. 

“ Hear that bell — sounds like a church bell, 
doesn’t it? Perhaps we’d better turn around 
now, and get near the club-house wharf before 
the fog gets too heavy.” 

He turned the canoe and began to paddle 
slowly down the bay. “ What else did the old 
geezer say? ” he demanded. 


228 


MARGERY MORRIS 


Jane sat up and brushed the hair out of her 
eyes. The reaction after her long weeping and 
despair had set in. Youth is always glad to 
talk about itself, certain that it is different 
from all the generations that have gone before. 
Shut in by the white walls of fog, Jane had a 
peculiar, detached, impersonal feeling that 
kept her from being self-conscious, and made it 
easier for her to talk. 

“ He said that the portrait of Margery was 
very bad — and, and he laughed. And he said 
that I never could be what I wanted, evidently, 
to be.” She paused. 

“ Well — what else did he say? Go on. 
Didn’t he condescend to say anything encour- 
aging? ” 

“ Oh, yes. He said if I am willing to work 
and drudge — only he didn’t express it that 
way — I might get somewhere some day, per- 
haps — but not so awfully far, I guess. And 
he did say that I might do well in some of the 
crafts — or interior decorating. It’s funny, I 
used to think of that.” 

“ Great Scott, woman,” ejaculated Perry, 
“ what do you expect? To be a Michael 
Angelo? If you can decorate a room well, that 


AND PLAIN JANE 229 

ought to be something to you. Why, look at 
those old Italian fellows — look at the way they 
spent years carving one perfect vase! I be- 
lieve in making common things beautiful. If 
I could design one beautiful horse-trough that 
would bring a sense of beauty to poor ignorant 
little children and that would refresh tired 
people going along the street by looking at it, 
I'd think that I’d accomplished enough for one 
life.” He paused and thanked his stars that 
Jack was not there to hear his oration. Jack 
had an unhappy faculty of finding his elder 
brother’s most impressive moments highly 
amusing and fit subjects for future mirth. 

“ Besides,” he went on, and then stopped 
short. 

“ Besides? ” Jane asked. 

Perry took a long breath. He felt that 
there were things he must say. “ Besides, I 
have a hunch that the reason you thought most 
about this scholarship-prize effect was because 
you wanted to live an independent life, for- 
ever, free of all the Watkins. Well, for your 
mother’s sake I’m not so sorry you didn’t get 
it. But if you really want to go on with your 
work, father would only be too glad to give 


MARGERY MORRIS 


230 

you every opportunity. You see, he started 
out to be an artist himself — and then he went 
into scientific work — like Morse, you know. 
But he has always been in hopes that some of 
us would inherit his artistic talent — but not one 
of us ever has. It would tickle him to death 
to have you become an artist.” 

Jane was silent; she was thinking: in a few 
short hours her palace of dreams in which she 
saw herself the brilliantly successful young 
artist commencing a career of fame and riches 
had vanished. Could she bring herself now to 
take up another career in which patient hard 
work would be the main thing, and in which 
showy independence would be replaced by the 
guidance and help of her resented stepfather? 

Perry’s voice interrupted her thoughts. 
“ The Irish have a saying,” he remarked mean- 
ingly, “ that when God closes one door He 
opens two.” 

“All my pet doors seem to close this sum- 
mer,” said Jane mournfully. “ First the won- 
derful time mother and I were going to have 
here together in the little cottage — and now 
everything that the prize was to bring me.” 

“ There are other doors,” returned Perry, 


AND PLAIN JANE 231 

“ and I’m sure that you’d like the door marked 
‘Watkins Family.’ Here we are at the 
wharf — take care ! Don’t step on the gunwale ! 
Wait a minute until I catch hold of the wharf. 
There!” 

Jane climbed out of the canoe and stood 
looking down at her stepbrother. She was 
too excited and tired to be self-conscious. 
“ Perry,” she said, speaking so fast that the 
words fairly tripped over each other, “ do 
you remember, in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ the 
baby that turned into a pig? ” 

“ Sure,” answered Perry, surprised. “ I 
played the Duchess in a play we had at school 
when I was a kid.” 

“ Well,” said Jane, “ I’ve decided. You re- 
member the Alice in Wonderland baby made 
an ugly infant but a handsome pig? I’m go- 
ing to try to be a beautiful pig! ” 


CHAPTER XVII 


DOUBTS 

“Well, once upon a time, Andy, a long, 
long time ago there lived in Sweden a princess 
named Elizabeth.” 

Margery, seated at the desk in the big living- 
room close to the veranda door, could hear 
Polly’s voice as she commenced a story to 
Andrew Watkins. Andrew was insatiable on 
the subject of stories and Margery smiled to 
herself as she heard Polly begin. She could 
see neither Polly nor Andrew from where she 
sat but she had been present so often at the 
story-tellings that she knew just how they 
would be placed; Andrew stretched out flat on 
the rush rug, his chin cupped in his sunburnt 
little paws, and Polly curled up in the big 
wicker chair, her long arms crossed back of her 
head, and a smile of contentment on her vivid 
face. 


232 


AND PLAIN JANE 233 

Polly’s voice was clear and musical and 
could be heard distinctly in the living-room; 
Margery was tired writing letters. With a 
sigh she put down her pen and leaned back in 
her chair to listen. She was almost as fond of 
Polly’s stories as was Andrew, and she had 
supreme faith in her friend’s literary ability. 

“ Polly is going to be a wonderful writer,” 
she had said to her grandfather one day. 
“And Dick is certain to be a great architect. 
Everybody seems to be a genius but me.” 

Her grandfather had smiled at her wistful 
tone. “ Your genius is for life, child,” he said, 
stroking a curl that lay on the shoulder nearest 
to him. “ That’s a talent in itself.” 

“ Well, Andrew,” Polly’s voice went on with 
the story, “ this Princess Elizabeth was very, 
very pretty. She had great ropes of blond 
hair, so light and shining that it was almost like 
silver, and great big eyes, as dark blue as the 
sea that beat against the shores of her native 
land, and her cheeks were so pretty and pink 
that some of the young men of her uncle’s 
court used to write about her rosiness being 
like the first coming of the dawn. And a 
great, great many young princes wanted to 


MARGERT MORRIS 


234 

marry her. But there was trouble in Sweden 
at that time; there were different sets of people 
who wanted to rule the land, and each group 
wanted to destroy the other group. Now some 
of the people who loved the Princess Elizabeth 
were afraid that those who wanted to destroy 
her uncle and his court would want to kill her, 
too, so they decided to send her away to 
America where some other Swedes had al- 
ready gone, and where they hoped she would 
be safe and happy. 

“ But it was a hard and risky thing to get 
her out of Sweden and they had to go about 
it in a queer way. They got a great, huge 
hogshead — that’s like a big barrel, you know — 
and they put the Princess Elizabeth into it. 
Then they fastened down the lid, and all the 
air she had to breathe was what came through 
the bunghole. They carried the hogshead 
down to a vessel that was waiting at the wharf 
to go to America, and put it aboard. The 
vessel was not to sail for several days, and 
there the poor princess had to stay all cramped 
up in that barrel. How she must have ached 
from staying so long in one position and how 
she must have longed to get out and take deep 


AND PLAIN JANE 235 

breaths of fresh air ! In fact, she not only had 
to stay cooped up there in that dreadful hogs- 
head until the vessel sailed, but until it was 
well out of sight of land across the North Sea, 
and free from danger of being overtaken and 
searched by a ship of the Swedish navy, which 
might have been warned to be on the watch for 
a runaway princess. 

“ Just think, Andrew, how glad she must 
have been when at last the lid of that old hogs- 
head was taken off and she was lifted out on 
the deck, free to move about and breathe all 
the fresh air she wanted, and to get a good 
meal, too, for I don’t suppose that they had 
been able to poke very much food in to her 
through the bunghole. 

“ Now, that was away back in 1600 or 1700, 
and crossing the Atlantic Ocean was very dif- 
ferent from what it is now. The ships then 
were very small, even their big war vessels 
would seem like little boats to us to-day; and 
there were no lighthouses then to warn sailors 
of dangerous rocks and sand bars, or govern- 
ment charts to teach them where lie shoals that 
may wreck their vessels. So in those days it 
was a dangerous thing to cross the Atlantic and 


236 MARGERY MORRIS 

a great many people lost their lives in ship- 
wrecks. As the ship carrying the Princess 
Elizabeth drew near to the New Jersey coast — 
which even to-day, when they have all sorts of 
lighthouses to warn mariners, is dangerous be- 
cause of so many treacherous sand bars — it was 
overtaken by a storm and wrecked off Cape 
May. 

“ I wonder if the Princess Elizabeth thought 
then of getting back into her hogshead, for she 
might have floated into shore over the breakers 
in it. Perhaps she tried to do it. However, 
that is something we can never know, nor can 
we ever know what became of the rest of the 
people on the ship — whether they were all 
drowned, or whether they were washed up on 
some other part of that lonely coast. All that 
we do know is that the Princess Elizabeth 
reached the shore, alive and safe, but entirely 
alone. 

“ I think that she must have been a very 
scared little princess then, and have wished 
herself back in Sweden a good many times. 
For that part of the coast then was lonely and 
wild, just great stretches of sand and pine- 
trees, and there were wild animals prowling 


AND PLAIN JANE 2 37 

there, wolves, and wildcats and bears. And no 
doubt there were Indians there, too. And the 
poor little princess had no way of making a 
fire, for she did not know how to make one the 
way the woodsmen do, by rubbing two dry 
sticks together; and even if she had had a fire, 
she would have had very little to cook — almost 
nothing, in fact. 

“ How did she keep alive? Well, you see it 
must have been summer time, because very few 
ships attempted to cross the Atlantic then in 
the winter gales, and in the summer there are 
always a great many berries growing wild in 
New Jersey. Fortunately she didn’t pick any 
that might have poisoned her. 

“ We know that she did keep alive and didn’t 
die from hunger or poisoning or fright, for one 
day it happened that a handsome young man 
who had gone down into the woods to shoot 
game suddenly discovered Elizabeth sitting by 
a little brook, in a thicket of black alder bushes. 
You can imagine how surprised he must have 
been to find this lovely young girl, in rich gar- 
ments all spoiled by sea-water, and torn by 
brambles, there alone in those remote woods. 

“ I wonder if the princess knew any Eng- 


238 MARGERT MORRIS 

lish, some princesses were taught foreign lan- 
guages even in those days, or if she and the 
young hunter had to communicate with each 
other by signs. I am sure that if she did that 
the first sign she made was to point to the game 
hanging from his shoulder and so let him know 
that she was hungry. And I am sure that 
she was very glad to see him and thought that 
he was the handsomest man that had ever 
lived, — finer than any prince of her native 
land — for if he had not found her, sooner or 
later she must have died of hunger and priva- 
tion. 

“ Of course he did not leave her there but 
took her home with him. That meant a long 
tramp together, through the lonely forest, until 
at last they came to the settlement where he 
lived, and by that time they had decided that 
they were in love with each other. And so 
they were married, the Swedish princess and 
the American hunter. 

“ They had a long and happy life together, 
and they prospered and the world went well 
with them. And the princess was none the 
worse for her queer experiences, for she lived 
to be ninety-five. 


AND PLAIN JANE 239 

“ Since then we have not had very many 
princesses come to our shores, and of those who 
came none of them ever embarked in a hogs- 
head. And now, Andy boy, my tale is told.” 

“ Is it true, Polly — all of it? ” 

Polly hesitated. “ Yes,” she said, “ it is 
true. Of course, I don’t know exactly that the 
princess was so pretty, and perhaps the hunter 
wasn’t as handsome as I said he was — though 
I am sure he seemed so to her when he found 
her. But a Swedish princess did land on the 
coast of New Jersey, just as I said, and the 
man who found her and married her was 
named Garrison, and to-day there are a great 
many Garrisons in New Jersey, all descended 
from the Princess Elizabeth.” 

Margery took up her pen again, and went on 
with her letters. Her head ached a little and 
she was tired. There were so many young 
people about the house all the time, and so 
much going on, that she was becoming over- 
excited and she found herself having to fight 
old faults of petulance and pride, which she 
thought she had happily thrust aside some time 
before. If her mother had been there she 
would have been made to rest for a couple of 


MARGERY MORRIS 


240 

days and to allow herself to get the benefit of 
the health-giving sea air; but as it was she 
went struggling on, trying to act as a capable 
hostess and to keep in with all the fun. 

Andrew came through the room. “ Hello, 
Margery,” he grinned. “ Polly’s been telling 
me a dandy story. I have to go home now. 
What are you doing? Make me some more 
golly wogs? ” He came close to her, jogging 
her right arm, and a big blot fell on the letter 
lying before her half-written. 

“ Andrew,” she cried impatiently, “ look 
what you have done! ” 

Andrew backed off. “ I’m sorry,” he said 
and went out, banging the screen-door behind 
him. 

Left alone, Margery threw down her pen. 
She felt annoyed with Andrew and still more 
annoyed with herself. “ It’s no use trying to 
write,” she declared, tearing up her letter and 
throwing the pieces into the scrap basket. “ I 
might as well go out on the porch and talk to 
the girls.” 

Polly and Esther were sitting close together 
on the big couch-hammock, looking at some 
sheets of paper Esther held in her hand. They 


AND PLAIN JANE 241 

were both laughing, silent laughter that appar- 
ently was not to be overheard, and they were 
whispering. They were evidently unaware of 
her presence, and Margery decided to tiptoe 
up back of them, and after she had surprised 
them to share the joke. 

Slipping off her pumps she stole across the 
veranda floor, her thin silk stockings making no 
sound. “ Hello,” she said in a deep assumed 
voice, slipping a hand over the eyes of each 
girl. “ What are you two giggling about? ” 

Neither Polly nor Esther was pleased. 
They sprang apart, and the papers in Esther’s 
hands fluttered to the floor. “ Why did you 
scare us like that?” demanded Polly testily, 
and hastily tried to gather together the papers. 

Apologetic, Margery bent to pick up one of 
the papers that had fallen at her feet. As she 
handed it to Esther she caught sight of her 
own name on it. “ What is up? ” she asked. 
“ What is the joke ? Do tell me.” 

Red and embarrassed, Polly and Esther 
looked at each other. 

“ We can’t,” giggled Esther. 

“ Children should be seen and not heard,” 
declared Polly with affected severity. 


242 


MARGERT MORRIS 


Margery flushed. “ I think that you might 
tell me,” she said indignantly. “ I don’t think 
that it is nice to keep secrets from me — in my 
own house.” 

The other girls looked at each other again. 
They plainly were embarrassed and distressed. 
“ It isn’t anything, Margery,” Polly said 
finally. “ Just a silly joke. When do we go 
out in the car? ” 

“ Four o’clock,” answered Margery. “ I 

Yes, Sarah, I’ll be right there.” Glad to get 
away for a moment, she hurried in answer to 
Sarah’s summons. After it was finally settled 
with Sarah what was to be done about the 
laundry, Margery went back to the veranda. 
Polly and Esther were sitting the width of the 
veranda apart, an expression, half of guilt, half 
of amusement on each young face. 

“You aren’t a bit good conspirators,” de- 
clared Margery. “ Why don’t you tell me 
what’s up? ” 

“We can’t,” answered Esther lamely. 

“ Perhaps we will some day,” said Polly 
briefly. “ Hadn’t we better get ready to go 
now? I saw Walter come out of the garage a 
minute ago.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 243 

Margery was rather quiet as she took her 
place in the car, but the other girls apparently 
did not notice anything amiss with her, and 
after they had stopped for Louisa Merritt, one 
of the young cottagers with whom a semi- 
intimacy had sprung up, they chattered away 
eagerly. But Margery, tired and nervous, 
found her mind reverting to the little scene on 
the veranda. She had become tired out, she 
told herself, trying to make her guests happy 
and comfortable, and in return they made fun 
of her behind her back. She had seen them 
laughing and had seen her name on the paper 
besides. And more than that, they were keep- 
ing a secret from her. The idea hurt her and 
spoiled her pleasure in the ride. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


MISHAPS AND HITCHES 

“ ‘ “ I’m dreadin’ what I’ve got to watch,” 
the Color-Sergeant said,’ ” quoted Polly with 
a laugh. 

Margery carefully slipped a mass of fluffy 
pink ruffles over her head. “ I hope that their 
mustaches drop off and that they forget their 
lines,” she said. “ The catastrophes — all the 
mishaps and hitches — are the only part of 
amateur theatricals that I enjoy. Ouch! — oh, 
Esther, quick! — this hook has caught in my 
hair! ” 

Esther flew to extricate her. “ Serves you 
right for being so cruel,” she laughed as she 
slipped the hook of Margery’s pink frock out 
of the strand of golden hair in which it had 
caught. “ I always suffer so in sympathy for 
the poor actors that I can’t enjoy a minute of 
the play. There — your hair looks all right — 
244 


AND PLAIN JANE 245 

don’t touch it. Turn around and I’ll fasten 
you up the back.” 

The three girls were dressing for the the- 
atricals to be held at the yacht club that even- 
ing. They had come in from the long auto- 
mobile ride too late to dress before dinner, and 
they were hurrying now in order to reach the 
club early and secure places near the front 
where they could see all that went on on the 
stage, and especially see all that Jack did or 
failed to do. Perry, Sam and Dick, who were 
to escort the girls, were already waiting for 
them down-stairs in the big living-room. 

“ Oh, do hurry,” urged Esther, who had 
been the first one to be dressed. “ Put on 
your slippers, Marge, while I fasten Polly’s 
girdle.” She cast a backward glance at her 
little yellow frock reflected in the long cheval- 
glass and skipped across the room to Polly, 
who with fingers that trembled with haste and 
excitement was vainly trying to finish putting 
on her soft white frock. 

“ There,” cried Margery, throwing down her 
shoe-horn. “ We’re ready. Yes, boys,” she 
called down the stairway. “ We’re coming at 
last.” 


246 MARGERT MORRIS 

The hall was filling fast as the girls and boys 
entered, but they managed to find places near 
the front where they could catch echoes of the 
bustle and excitement going on behind the 
scenes and imagine they recognized the eyes 
that kept appearing at the peep-hole in the 
curtain. 

“ There’s Jack, I know,” cried Esther. 
“And, my goodness, what’s that? ” as a bump 
and a faint scream came to their ears. 

“ I wonder where Jane is,” said Polly, twist- 
ing her neck to look at the people coming in 
through the door. “ She promised to be sure 
and be here.” 

Perry stood up and looked. “ She isn’t in 
that crowd,” he announced. “ It’s getting 
near the fateful hour.” 

“ Perhaps one of you boys had better go for 
her,” suggested Polly. 

“ I’ll go,” said Perry and Dick in a breath, 
but Dick got out first. 

As he neared the door, Jane came hurrying 
in breathlessly. “Am I late? ” she asked. 
“Hello, Perry,” with a smile of understand- 
ing at her stepbrother. “ You see, I did come.” 

Margery was bewildered; Perry and Jane 


AND PLAIN JANE 247 

to be on such apparently good terms! She 
turned to Polly; but Jane on entering had 
tossed Polly a folded piece of paper, which she 
had opened and showed to Dick, who bent over 
it absorbed. 

A little absently, Margery leaned back in 
her chair and smoothed down the pale pink 
ruffles billowing about her. “Was this some 
more of the mystery? ” she asked herself. 

“ Margery,” said a voice in her ear. She 
turned; Jack, dressed as a country boy in high 
boots and overalls and an old flannel shirt, 
had come out from behind the scenes. “ Kath- 
erine wants you,” he whispered. “ Come on — 
the curtain is going up in a minute.” 

Obediently Margery rose and accompanied 
him back of the stage. 

“How do you like my make-up?” asked 
Jack, turning an astonishingly red face toward 
her. “ I don’t dare to breathe for fear I’ll 
wipe this paint off my face. Aren’t the girls 
sights when you’re close to them? ” 

Margery, catching sight of Mary Benton, 
laughed, for Mary, with great blue circles 
painted under her eyes, her cheeks purply red 
and her nose whitened like a marshmallow. 


248 MARGERY MORRIS 

looked absurdly different from her usual sun- 
burnt self. 

“ Oh, kiddie,” cried Katherine, rushing up 
to Margery, her hair tightly screwed back from 
her face into a hard little knob at the back of 
her head, and carrying a curly wig in her hand. 
“Won’t you be the open fire and the prompter? 
Elsie Maclaren was to have been — but she 
fainted. Did you hear the bump when she 
went down? My dear, I never was so scared 
in my life! ” 

Margery gasped. “ Open fire — will I be 
the open fire? Katherine, what do you mean?” 

“ I mean, w T ill you look after the fireplace 
we have arranged for the proposal scene,” ex- 
plained Katherine impatiently, her nerves 
having reached the acute stage apparently in- 
separable from amateur theatricals. 

She led the way to the pasteboard fireplace, 
and showed Margery the lantern covered with 
an old red sweater which was to provide the 
rosy firelight needed to add color to the pro- 
posal scene. 

“ See,” she said, “ you have to watch the 
lantern to see that it doesn’t go up, — and don’t 
let the sweater scorch! And then, you’re to 


AND PLAIN JANE 249 

hold the book on your knees and prompt us 
whenever we need it — which will be about 
every two minutes, I’m afraid. Now, Jack — 
don’t forget, for pity sakes, to give me the cue 
to come in during the second act. And, 
Jack! — for goodness sake don’t forget that in 
the last act after you’ve left the stage by the 
door on the right hand side that you’ll have to 
climb out of the window and go around the 
building so as to be able to come in by the door 
at the left-hand side of the stage ! You be sure 
and see that he gets off in time, Margery. 
Now, don’t forget. Jack!” 

“ Yeth, ma’am,” answered Jack with osten- 
tatious meekness, and Katherine disappeared. 

“ What does she mean? ” asked Margery. 

“ Oh, there isn’t any way of getting round 
behind the scenes from one side of the stage to 
the other. So in the last act I have to climb 
out of a window on this side, and scoot around 
the back of the building and climb in the win- 
dow on the other side, so as to be able to come 
in that door on the left-hand side of the stage. 
It’s a beastly nuisance, but it can’t be helped. 
You see this isn’t a real stage — just a make- 
shift platform we built ourselves with the help 


MARGERY MORRIS 


250 

of the janitor. Better crawl into that fireplace 
now and attend to your lantern.” 

Margery glanced at the fireplace with dis- 
favor. It looked very hot and uncomfortable 
and she disliked getting her dainty organdy 
frock mussed and soiled. Besides, she would 
be away from Polly and the others and so miss 
all the fun. 

“ I’ll be a sight for the dance afterward,” 
she commented. 

Jack was sympathetic. “ Sure, it’s a shame,” 
he said. “ I wanted Katherine to have Perry 
to do it — but she said that he is too big and 
clumsy. I’ll come and talk to you whenever I 
can — and fan you,” he promised. “ I’ve got 
to go now. The curtain is going up this min- 
ute and I’m supposed to be on the stage when 
she goes ! ” 

In no very cheerful mood, Margery gath- 
ered her fleecy pink skirts about her and crawl- 
ing into the fireplace tucked herself out of sight 
from the audience. The lantern made the 
place stiflingly hot, and she disliked the smell 
from the burning oil so close under her nose. 
With a sigh she spread the prompt-book out on 
her knee. 


AND PLAIN JANE 251 

It was a warm thunderous evening, and 
Margery had only the consolation of knowing 
that the actors were as uncomfortable as she. 
The play was one of an old-fashioned New 
England winter, and the wretched members of 
the caste were bundled up in all the heavy win- 
try-looking clothes that they had been able to 
muster. Mary Benton had on her mother’s 
heavy automobile coat and a set of furs begged 
from one of the year-round inhabitants of Wy- 
anoke, and the boys were all wearing overcoats 
and sweaters. Salt, to represent snow, had 
been liberally sprinkled over the heads and 
shoulders of those who were to enter from the 
blizzard supposed to be raging outside. In 
the heat the salt melted and added its stickiness 
to the discomfort they were already enduring. 

Margery, her eyes more on the row of her 
friends in the audience than on the performers, 
saw that Polly and Dick were convulsed over 
something that was happening on the stage. 
Transferring her attention back to the actors 
she was in time to see Jack in the midst of a 
long speech on the rigors of the snow-storm 
and painfulness of his own half-frozen state, 
unconsciously scratching a mosquito bite on his 


MARGERY MORRIS 


252 

ankle, while the perspiration visibly glistened 
on his heated face. 

The curtain fell at last, and Margery, rather 
white and exhausted, crawled out of the fire- 
place for a few minutes’ rest and fresh air. 

“ You blessed child,” cried Katherine, catch- 
ing sight of her, “ you must be used up ! Jack ! 
— get her some ice-water. Oh dear, there’s the 
bell for to be on the stage! Now Margery, be 
sure to remember that Jack is to climb out of 
the window and run round to the other side of 
the building so as to come in by the left-hand 
stage door! He’s so harum-scarum — he’s just 
as likely as not to forget! ” 

Margery nodded and gripped the prompt- 
book tighter. She had forgotten about Jack’s 
entrances and exits required by the exigencies 
of the plot of the play. She envied him now 
his chance to breathe the cool night air. The 
oily fumes of the imitation open fire suffocated 
her, and she did not dare to draw back from it, 
for the lantern was out of order, and by per- 
petually going up threatened to set the sweater 
on fire. 

The curtains parted and the second act be- 
gan. It seemed hotter than ever in the little 


AND PLAIN JANE 253 

fireplace, and Margery, at the end of the first 
ten minutes, found that her foot had gone to 
sleep. 

“ Well, this is too much,” she exclaimed to 
herself indignantly and leaned forward to 
pinch and prod her ankle. 

The prompt-book slid from her lap with a 
thud. “ Gracious,” she thought, and reached 
forward after it, almost upsetting the lan- 
tern. 

Jack started at the noise, floundered, forgot 
his lines, and turned despairingly toward Mar- 
gery for help. Margery, frantically searching 
through the recovered book, could not find the 
place. 

“ Make it up — you’ll have to make it up,” 
she whispered shrilly. 

“What?” asked Jack, forgetting in his 
panic to act at all. 

The audience laughed. The hitch furnished 
some excitement and people were beginning to 
enjoy themselves thoroughly. 

Margery grew hot and cold, and afterward 
never would believe that it was only a moment 
or two before Jack recovered himself and went 
on with the play. It seemed hours to her. 


MARGERY MORRIS 


25 4 

The door behind her opened and someone 
from the audience slipped in. 

She half turned her head; then, afraid of an- 
other mishap, kept her eyes resolutely on the 
book. 

“ Hello,” whispered Dick. 

“ Hello,” whispered Margery back. “Don’t 
make me lose my place again. Oh, Dick — did 
it seem so very bad when Jack got stuck and I 
couldn’t help him? ” 

Dick chuckled and sat down on the floor 
behind her. “ I think that the audience en- 
joyed that more than any other part of the 
play,” he said. “ But until I saw you reach 
for the book I didn’t know where you were — 
thought the girls had you back in the dressing- 
rooms to help them. Phew! — it must be hot 
in there — get out, and I’ll do the cooking act.” 

“ Oh, Dick,” sighed Margery, “ I’m so hot 
and tired — and so bored. But you can’t get in 
here — you’re too big.” 

Dick laughed. “ It does look that way,” he 
agreed, as he tried to force his broad shoulders 
into the aperture and stuck. “ Wait a min- 
ute.” 

He disappeared, to return with a newspaper 


AND PLAIN JANE 255 

in his hand just as Jack came off the stage. 
“ Hello, J ack — why didn’t you make it more 
comfortable for Margery? ” he demanded. 
“Couldn’t you have fanned her, at least?” 
Sitting down cross-legged on the floor behind 
the fireplace he began to fan Margery so vigor- 
ously with the newspaper that the lantern 
threatened to go out. 

Jack was honestly repentant. “ Great 
Scott, Margery, I never gave you a thought,” 
he said frankly. “ To tell the truth,” he added 
gloomily, “ I haven’t got the brains of a hop- 
toad to-night. Did you ever see a worse mess 
than I made of that speech? ” 

“ Oh, Jack,” Margery whispered, “ I’m so 
sorry — it was all my fault for losing the place.” 

“ Yes, I know it was,” Jack concurred, still 
gloomy. “ I wasn’t going to say anything to 
you — but as you know it yourself, anyway, — I 
suppose I might as well.” 

Margery was silent. She had not expected 
Jack to agree with her so promptly. “ It was 
his fault, too — partly,” she whispered indig- 
nantly to Dick. 

“Anything I can do for you, Marge?” 
asked Jack dejectedly. 


256 MARGERT MORRIS 

“ Oh, Jack, could you get me some water — 
I heard Katherine say that there was some in 
the boys’ dressing-room. Or never mind — 
Dick can go for it.” 

“ Dick doesn’t know the way.” 

Still despondent over his recent failure, Jack 
withdrew. 

“Dick,” whispered Margery suddenly, keep- 
ing an anxious eye on the prompt-book, “ is 
there anything queer going on? ” 

“ Queer going on? ” asked Dick amazed. 
“ What do you mean? ” 

“ About me, I mean. Everybody is queer. 

Polly and Esther ” She stopped, her 

pride rebelling at confessing what had dis- 
tressed her. 

“How do you mean ‘queer’?” inquired 
Dick, a twinkle in his eye. 

“ Oh, I don’t know,” parried Margery, hav- 
ing trouble in explaining. It was hard, she 
found, to put her doubts and suspicions into 
words. “ Shh, there’s Katherine looking at 
us — I guess we’re making too much noise.” 

They were silent. 

“ Dick,” asked Margery a moment later, 
u do you smell something burning? ” 


AND PLAIN JANE 2 57 

“ It’s that sweater over the lantern, I think. 
Take care,” as Margery attempted to move it. 
“ Take care! You almost put yourself on fire 
then.” 

Dick reached in a long arm, and with his 
jack-knife managed, with Margery’s help, to 
saw off the scorching portion of the sweater, 
which he carried to the window and dropped 
out on the grass beneath. 

“ Dick,” whispered Margery frantically, 
“where is Jack? I forgot all about him! — 
Your going to the window reminded me ! Oh, 
where is he? Do go and see! Quick! 
Quick! ” 

Dick stared at her. “ What’s the matter? ” 
he asked. 

“ Jack! We must get him! He’s gone to 
get me some water! ” 

“ Great Scott! Do you feel faint? Never 
mind — I’ll get you some water! Brace up! 
Brace up now! ” 

“ No, no, no ! Of course I’m not faint ! Get 
Jack! Oh Jack!” she whispered shrilly as 
Jack came sauntering nonchalantly toward 
them with a glass of water in his hand. “ J ack ! 
Quick! ” 


258 MARGERY MORRIS 

“ Here’s the water,” said J ack, handing it to 
her. “ Sorry I was so long. It’s so hot to- 
night that my make-up was coming off and I 
got some ” 

Margery interrupted him. “ It’s almost 
time for you to go on the stage — from the other 
side! What will you do? You’re too late to 
climb out of the window! What will you 
do!” 

“ He’ll have to climb out of the window,” 
said Dick. 

“ He can’t — he never can get all the way 
round the club-house, and through that window 
and down the hall!” Margery fairly wrung 
her hands in her distress. “ Oh, what will we 
do?” 

“ You’re a nice one,” grumbled Jack. 
“ You were to start me off in time.” 

Margery had crawled out of the fireplace, 
leaving the lantern and the actors on the stage 
to their fate, and stood silent before Jack, a 
small pink monument of guilt. “ He’s got to 
get there somehow,” she faltered. 

“ Of course he has! ” answered Jack himself. 
“ But how? By flying over the stage or crawl- 
ing under it? ” 


AND PLAIN JANE 259 

“ You’ve said it,” remarked Dick quietly. 
“ Crawl under the stage — you might have been 
there now if you hadn’t wasted so much time 
talking. If you go quickly it won’t take you 
as long as it would to go out of the window and 
round the house.” 

“ But, Dick, he can’t,” objected Margery. 
“ The stage is only about a foot from the floor, 
and he will stick! ” 

“ Can’t help it — it’s the only way for him to 
get there.” 

“ He’ll never do it,” and Margery tossed her 
hands dramatically toward the ceiling. 

But Jack had already started. 

Fairly holding their breath, the others lis- 
tened to the strange bumping and thumpings 
that came from under the stage. With praise- 
worthy self-control, the actors on the stage 
went on with their parts, apparently uncon- 
scious of the racket under their feet. 

“ He’s half-way across,” whispered Mar- 
gery. “ Hear him.” 

“ He’s almost there,” answered Dick. 
“ Great Scott — is he stuck? No, he’s all 
right!” 

They listened anxiously. 


2 6o MARGERY MORRIS 


“ I have loved you since I first saw you.” 
Mr. Martin, the leading man, gave the cue for 
Jack’s entrance. 

A bumping under the stage followed. 

“ Jack would never have gotten there if he 
had gone around the house,” murmured Dick. 
“ He would have stuck climbing that wire 
fence by the kitchen.” 

Mr. Martin waited, surprised. “ I have 
loved you since I first saw you,” he repeated. 

He waited again. “ I have loved you since 
I first saw you,” he said sternly. The thump- 
ing under the stage increased in volume, but 
still no Jack. 

Mr. Martin grew peremptory. “ I have 
loved you since I first saw you,” he shouted. 

The audience once more was amused. 
“ What’s that funny noise? ” people began to 
ask. 

“ I have loved you since the first time I ever 
saw you,” cried Mr. Martin entreatingly. 

“ I have loved you,” he began again, now 
thoroughly upset. 

The door at the left opened, and Jack, cov- 
ered with dust, rushed in. 

“Well,” said Margery as, the play over at 


AND PLAIN JANE 261 

last, she joined Polly and the others, “ never 
again will I say that the only part of amateur 
theatricals that I enioy are the mishaps and 
hitches.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


POOR KATIE 

The big mastiff Waldo padded up the 
stairs to Margery’s room. It was late and the 
dog evidently felt that his young mistress 
should be stirring. Putting his paws on the 
edge of the bed he reared himself up and 
barked, three loud booming barks. 

Margery opened startled, sleepy eyes. 
“ Gracious, you old thing,” she exclaimed, sit- 
ting up, her curls lying loose on her shoulders. 
“ Get down — get down at once, sir. What 
will Sarah say to your dusty feet on that clean 
sheet? Charge, Waldo, charge!” 

Waldo crouched obediently, and watched 
her with adoring eyes, his ears cocked and his 
tail thumping the floor. Margery leaned out 
of the bed and patted him affectionately on the 
head. “ You’re a nice old thing — yes, you 
are.” 

She settled back on the pillow and with her 
262 


AND PLAIN JANE 263 

arm under her head lay dreamily watching the 
gay chintz curtain fluttering in the wind that 
blew, fresh and cool, in from the sea. 

Through the open doorway of the room next 
to hers she could see Polly’s brown head buried 
in the pillow. She knew that she ought to get 
up and waken Polly, but she was pleasantly 
languid after the play and dance of the night 
before and she enjoyed lying there on her com- 
fortable bed living over again the fun and ex- 
citement, seeing again the ballroom bright with 
lights, hearing the orchestra, feeling herself 
flying over the smooth, level floor. 

She laughed a little, and patted Waldo’s 
head as she thought of her trials and adven- 
tures in the fireplace and of how glad she had 
been when the curtain went down and she had 
been able to join Polly and the others. Start- 
led at her pallor and air of weariness they had 
taken her out to a cool corner of the veranda, 
fanned her and given her lemonade while 
Esther’s deft fingers had straightened her ruf- 
fles and smoothed her hair. By the time the 
ballroom had been cleared of the chairs set for 
the play, and the dancing had commenced, 
Margery, rested and refreshed, was ready for 


264 MARGERY MORRIS 

the fun. Always popular, she had had even 
more than her usual number of partners and 
share of attention. 

But young as she was, Margery had the 
happy faculty of not forgetting others in the 
midst of her own enjoyment, or of losing her 
head in the excitement of her small triumphs. 
In spite of the exhilaration of her popularity 
she had taken the time and thought to make 
sure that her guests were equally provided with 
partners and to see that the boys were all intro- 
duced to Jane. 

“ Perry,” she had asked as they finished a 
one-step, “ have you and Jane made things 
up?” 

“ Well, not definitely — but we’re improving. 
I ran across her yesterday on the rocks — she 
seemed pretty blue and out of sorts, so I took 
her out in the canoe — and we had rather a good 
talk. But to-night when I asked her for dances 
I got only one — and Jack didn’t get any at 
all.” 

“ Oh, dear! I wish I hadn’t introduced a 
single boy to her! Jane doesn’t know as many 
people here as the rest of us do, so I made a 
special point of introducing the lads to her.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 265 

It was with the intention of giving Jane a 
gentle scolding that Margery had beckoned to 
her at supper-time. 

“ Jane,” she had begun as Dick and Sam 
went off to get them some ice-cream. 

“ Oh, Margery,” Jane had interrupted, her 
lips quivering, “ I’ve wanted all day to see you! 
I have something dreadful to tell you! The 
portrait didn’t get the prize, or come anywhere 
near it. I am so sorry to have made you pose 
all those mornings ! ” 

Margery had been all sympathy at once. 
“ Why, why — you little goosie-dear — you are 
not caring, are you? ” 

Jane nodded, too big a lump in her throat to 
speak. 

“Why, honey-child, what chance did you 
really think you had with all those experienced 
students — I think that you were wonderful to 
try at all. I’m so glad that you did try, 
though, for it gave me a chance to know you! 
And we did have fun over the posing — you 
know we did ! Besides, you had the practice of 
painting, and you can’t get anywhere in any- 
thing without practice.” 

Jane smiled. “Well, I’m glad that you 


266 


MARGERT MORRIS 


don’t care — that’s what made me feel so bad 
to-day — I had rather got over caring for my- 
self, but I was afraid that you might be disap- 
pointed. Here come the boys — look at the 
huge plates of ice-cream they have! ” 

Margery, thinking over these things, grew 
dreamy, and had almost dozed off to sleep, 
when she heard the shade in the next room go 
up with a bang, and Polly’s cheerful voice 
caroling a tuneless song. 

“ Oh, Waldo,” she murmured sleepily, 
“ Polly is so energetic and I do feel so drowsy.” 
She yawned, and her eyes closed. “ Oh, 

Waldo, I ought to get up — I, I ” 

Something wet hit her face and she opened 
her eyes to see Polly and Esther dressed and 
standing beside her bed. 

“ Gracious, what was that? ” she asked 
sleepily. “ Sw — pht,” she sputtered as the 
wet sponge in Polly’s hand descended on her 
face again. “ Polly, you rascal! ” 

“ Hurry up, sleepy head,” said Esther. 
“ It’s breakfast time! ” 

Margery sat up. “ All right — I’ll be ready 
in a jiffy.” 

Polly and Esther went down, and singing. 


AND PLAIN JANE 267 

Margery bounded out of bed and turned on 
the water in the bath-tub. 

“ Bad luck to sing before breakfast, Miss 
Margery,” said Sarah, stopping at the door. 
“ ‘ Sing before breakfast, cry before night/ 
you know.” 

Margery laughed. “ Now, Sarah! ” 

Sarah was offended. “All right, Miss Mar- 
gery — you mark my words.” 

Kind and indulgent as he was, Mr. Morris 
had certain rules to which he demanded strict 
adherence. Chief among these was punctual- 
ity to meals, and Margery, although she was 
naturally inclined to laziness in the morning, 
had grown to be very careful about being on 
time for breakfast. Now she dashed through 
the process of dressing; brushed back her curls 
with a hasty dab of the brush, slipped into a 
straight little frock with few buttons to fasten, 
and not stopping to get her morning shoes out 
of the cupboard, put on the slippers she had 
worn the evening before. 

“ Oh, dear,” she thought, as she ran down 
the stairs, “ these precious white slippers have 
stretched horribly. I’ll never be able to wear 
them to another dance — why, they’re so loose 


268 MARGERY MORRIS 

at the heel that I can scarcely keep them on 
now! ” 

She found Mrs. Endicott in the dining-room. 
“ Good-morning, Margery dear,” Mrs. Endi- 
cott began rather hurriedly, “ I just stopped in 
to speak to you about that concert of Miss 
Prentice’s this afternoon. I have had news 
about some of my property that will take me 
to the city this morning — I think I would bet- 
ter see a lawyer about it. But I will be back 
in Winchester in plenty of time to take you to 
the concert. And Katherine is very anxious 
to go to the country club there to-night — I 
thought if I am not too tired you girls might 
stay with me and we will all have dinner 
at the club together. We will come home 
early.” 

“ Oh, Aunt Kate — we’d love to. Where 
shall we meet you? And what ought we to 
wear? Do you think my pink voile is good 
enough? ” 

“ Plenty,” laughed Mrs. Endicott. “ Re- 
member, meet me at half-past three at the en- 
trance of the Brightwood. And, Mr. Morris, 
if these girls are not home by half-past five or 
a quarter of six, you will know that they have 


AND PLAIN JANE 269 

stayed to dinner with me. Good-by — I must 
fly!” 

“ Was the dance a success last night? ” asked 
Mr. Morris, as with a wave of her hand Mrs. 
Endicott withdrew. 

“ Oh yes, indeed, grandpapa — we did have 
such a good time. I wish that you had been 
there. I’m sure you would have enjoyed 
watching some of the dancing — it was so 
funny! There was one girl that danced just 
like this.” 

Eager to amuse her grandfather, Margery 
jumped up and danced around the table. In 
her high spirits she grew reckless ; suddenly her 
foot turned in her loose slipper, she stumbled 
and, falling against a chair, knocked it vio- 
lently through the glass front of the built-in 
china closet and shattered a row of valuable 
cups and plates. 

“Oh, grandpapa!” Margery’s eyes were 
wide with horror. “ Look what I have done ! ” 

Mr. Morris rose and put on his glasses the 
better to inspect the wreckage. “ I only wish 
they were mine,” he said quietly. “ I told the 
agent when we rented this cottage that I 
wanted all these valuable things taken away. 


MARGERY MORRIS 


270 

But it wasn’t done, and as there was no other 
place to put them, I let them stay. That’s the 
worst of renting the house of an artist and col- 
lector — there are too many costly things to 
take care of.” 

Breakfast over, Polly and Esther went off 
to write home letters and Margery sat on the 
wide veranda with her grandfather. She felt 
somewhat subdued. 

“ It was ‘ Sing before breakfast, cry before 
night! ’ ” she called to Sarah, passing by in the 
hall. 

Sarah came to the door. “ Mr. Morris,” 
she began excitedly, “ it’s Katie that’s in sor- 
row and throuble.” 

“ Why, what has happened? Has Katie 
broken something, too? ” 

“ It’s her brother that’s been killed on the 
railroad.” 

“ Her brother? Dear me, that is sad.” 

“ It’s on the railroad he was killed. An’ his 
wife’s wantin’ Katie — an’ her up -stairs crying 
her eyes out. An’ seein’ no way of gettin’ to 
the funeral.” 

“ Why, she must go to the funeral, of course, 
poor girl. Where did her brother live? ” 


AND PLAIN JANE 271 

“ At Bridgefield, sir. There’s a boat at four 
from Winchester — perhaps it’s that she could 
be takin’.” 

“ Very well — I’ll engage reservations for 
her.” 

“ I’ll do it for you, grandpapa,” cried Mar- 
gery, eager to atone for the broken china- 
closet. “ I’ll do it for you — the nearest tele- 
phone is at the yacht club. I’ll run down for 
you.” 

“ Very well, dear, you had better go at once. 
And while you are there, telephone to old Mrs. 
Maris and her daughter and offer them the use 
of the car this afternoon. If you girls are all 
going to be at Winchester this afternoon, they 
may as well have it.” 

The wire to the steamship office was busy, 
and Margery, filling in time at the club-house 
until she could get her connection, was glad to 
see Mary Benton. 

“ Hello, Marge,” said Mary airily, “ come 
and take a sail with me. I’ve persuaded Perry 
into letting me borrow his boat — the Prudent 
Sally — whenever I want it. Perry’s a regu- 
lar old granny about that precious boat of 
his.” 


272 


MARGERY MORRIS 


“I’d love to go with you, Mary, but I am 
waiting for a telephone call.” 

“ You’ll wait a long time,” laughed Mary. 
“ Look who’s there ’phoning to some poor 
girl.” 

Margery glanced toward the telephone 
booth, and saw Mr. Vanderslice, the club bore, 
and notoriously long-winded, ensconced. 
“ Oh, dear,” she said. 

“ ‘ Oh, dear,’ ” mocked Mary. “ Come on, 
we’ll just go across the bay and back. Don’t 
get to be like Perry — a regular granny. I be- 
lieve I’d go and jump off the dock in despair if 
I were as timid as these boys here are.” 

The handsome, swaggering girl glanced at 
the young man standing by the door, who was 
plainly admiring her, laughed, and, seizing 
Margery by the arm, said, “ Come on, granny, 
come on.” 

The little sail across the smooth bay was 
pleasant, and Margery almost forgot the inci- 
dent of the broken dishes, and her depression 
over poor Katie’s tragedy in her delight in the 
great fluffy white clouds, the sunshine, and the 
blue water. 

“ There, I got you back safely, granny,” 


AND PLAIN JANE 273 

said Mary as they came back to the wharf. 
“ Now go and telephone.” 

The telephone was again in use, and Mar- 
gery sat down to wait. But it was not until 
luncheon time when Mr. Morris asked her what 
arrangements she had made for Katie that she 
thought of the telephone again; for as she 
waited little Andrew Watkins was brought to 
her, his hand badly cut from a piece of loose 
slate on the boat-house road where he had been 
playing. The sight of blood always made her 
sick and faint, but she managed to escort Andy 
to the doctor, and then, although white and 
feeling rather wobbly as to knees, to take him 
to his home. There she found Katherine En- 
dicott wanting her aid and advice as to a fair 
she was getting up, and after stopping for 
Esther and Polly they all went down in the vil- 
lage to make purchases. 

“ Oh, grandpapa,” Margery cried as Mr. 
Morris reminded her of Katie, “ I’m so sorry, 
I forgot. I couldn’t get the ’phone, and then 
Andy cut his hand, and then — well, the whole 
morning just slipped away! I’ll go right 
now! ” 

This time there were fewer people about the 


MARGERY MORRIS 


274 

club, and she had no trouble in ’phoning, al- 
though she was unable to make really satisfac- 
tory arrangements for Katie. 

“ Oh, dear,” she sighed as she climbed slowly 
up the hill, “ I suppose poor Katie may have 
to sit up on the deck all night. It’s too bad 
when she’s feeling so sad anyway.” 

She grew conscious that she herself was very 
tired and that the tears were near the surface. 
“ I don’t feel so awfully happy,” she thought. 
“ I feel as though I want something, but I 
don’t know what.” 

What she did want was to be put to bed for 
a long nap, but she was too tired and nervous 
to recognize that, besides the thought of Katie 
drove her on. 

“ Do you know, girls,” she said to Polly and 
Esther after luncheon, “ I believe that I had 
better go over to Winchester with Katie and 
see her off. Something might be wrong with 
the tickets — and I’d never forgive myself if she 
didn’t get off all right after the way I forgot to 
telephone. So I’m afraid I won’t be able to 
go to the concert with you. Don’t say any- 
thing to grandpapa — it might worry him, but 
I think that I had better do it.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 275 

“ Well, of course, I supiDose you ought to do 
it,” answered Polly cheerfully. “ It would be 
bad if Katie didn’t get off, under all the cir- 
cumstances. Of course we’ll miss you,” she 
added perfunctorily. 

Margery drew back. “ I think you might 
at least pretend you’ll miss me,” she cried, 
frankly hurt. 

Polly slipped her arm around Margery’s 
waist. “ We do, chick-a-biddy, we do. It’s 
just that we have some errands to do in Win- 
chester — some important errands.” She 
caught Esther’s eye, and they both burst into 
uncontrollable giggles. 

“ Oh dear, Margery, don’t look at me like 
that — it’s just something so funny — I’ll tell 
you some day, maybe ! ” 

The girls stopped laughing abruptly, and 
Margery, her lips quivering, went out of the 
room in search of Katie. 

“ I’m never, never going to love anyone 
again,” she said to herself wrathfully. “ I — I 
cared such a lot about Polly and Esther, and 
look at the way they are acting! ” 

She found Katie putting her clothes into a 
pathetic bundle tied with a piece of rope. “ I’ll 


MARGERY MORRIS 


276 

lend you a valise, Katie,” she said kindly, “ and 
I’m going to the boat with you to see that you 
get off all right.” 

Comforted somewhat by the gratitude in 
Katie’s half-drowned eyes, she paused. 
“ Well, Katie cares for me, anyway,” she 
thought, “ even if the others don’t.” 

Struck by a sudden idea, she said aloud, “ If 
I can find somebody with a sailboat, I’ll come 
out and wave to you as the boat goes past the 
point. Be sure and look out for me! ” 

She went back to the other girls. “We 
must be more careful what we say before Mar- 
gery,” she heard Polly say severely to Esther, 
as she drew near the door. 

Margery bent and retied her shoestrings, 
while she coughed discreetly. “ I do wish that 
I’d stop overhearing things,” she thought de- 
spairingly. “ I’ll have to wear ear-mufflers 
and ring a dinner-bell wherever I go.” 


CHAPTER XX 


ON THE WHARF 

The wind from the sea sent little waves 
slapping against the pilings of the long, nar- 
row wharf belonging to the yacht club. Jane, 
standing at the end of the dock to speak to the 
club janitor about the lobsters he had promised 
to procure for Cousin Willy, had hard work to 
keep on her big, broad-brimmed black hat. 

“Looks like a squall a-comin’?” remarked 
the man, as he finished tying his dory and 
moved along toward the shore. 

Jane nodded absently. She had seen Mr. 
Hodge that morning, and after a long talk 
with him she had formed a new resolution. She 
would give up her dreams of immediate fame 
and fortune; the thought of “Miss Gale, the 
famous artist,” was to be stowed away in some 
mental pigeonhole and forgotten, and she 
would start all over again, taking up her work 
humbly and earnestly. That it meant drudg- 
* 277 


278 MARGERT MORRIS 

\ 

ery she recognized, and infinite patience; but 
she felt happier than she had done when her 
mind was given over to feverish dreams. 

“ I’ll have to work and work,” she thought, 
her eyes following a speeding motor-boat. 
“ And even then, I mayn’t amount to so aw- 
fully much. But anyway, I’m going to keep 
on trying, and trying — like Margery with her 
swimming.” She smiled as she thought of 
Margery trying again and again to master 
some difficult stroke; struggling, splashing, 
gasping, sinking, but keeping on until at last 
she had succeeded. 

“ It will be more Plain Jane than ever,” she 
thought, “ for it will be Plain Jane the Hard 
Worker. I wish I could see Perry and tell 
him that I’ve got over my silly fit of the other 
day.” 

She sighed as she thought of Perry. She 
liked him so much that she regretted she could 
not know him as an individual, and not as a 
stepbrother. “ The Watkins boys really are 
ever so nice,” she said to herself. “ I’d love to 
know them if it wasn’t for their awful father.” 
She sighed again as she thought of her step- 
father. 


AND PLAIN JANE 279 

Turning back to the land, she was surprised 
to see Perry standing half-way down the long 
wharf, talking to a girl. J ane hesitated. The 
coat she had on, while light and warm, was one 
of Cousin Willy’s most extreme bargains, and 
was several sizes too large for her and of a vivid 
and large green and white check. Recogniz- 
ing the girl as Mary Benton she decided to wait 
until she had moved away. Her back to the 
sea she stood watching Perry and Mary and 
thinking what an effective picture they made 
against the dark gray sky; two vivid, strong, 
tall young creatures, Perry in the white flan* 
nels and heavy white sweater he so often wore, 
and Mary in a yellow oil-skin slicker and 
cap. 

A group of men joined the others, fat, 
youngish men down from the city for the week- 
end; a set particularly detested by Jane. See- 
ing that they were likely to stand chatting for 
some time she concluded not to wait any 
longer. 

As she came up to the group she saw by the 
hot color in Perry’s cheeks that he was embar- 
rassed and annoyed. The older men were also 
plainly chuckling over his discomfiture. Mary 


28 o 


MARGERY MORRIS 


nodded casually to Jane, and went on with her 
talk with Perry. 

“ Really, Perry, I think that you are hor- 
rid,” she jjrotested with a killing sidelong 
glance from her dark eyes at the group of men. 
“ Here you go and tell me to use your old boat 
any day I feel like it — and then when I do 
want to use it, you say I can’t.” 

“ You’re welcome to the Prudent Sally any 
time that you want her, Mary,” protested 
Perry. “ I only objected because a squall is 
coming! ” 

“ And when I ask you to come out with me,” 
went on Mary, not heeding his words, “ you 
won’t even do that.” 

<c I told you, Mary, it’s just because a squall’s 
coming,” repeated Perry vehemently. 

Mary laughed, and the group of men echoed 
her amusement. “ The wind is blowing — but 
you don’t want to go sailing in a dead calm, do 
you?” 

“ Hmm,” murmured Perry, inarticulately. 

“ I believe that you’re afraid,” teased the 
girl with a laughing glance at the men. They 
laughed too. It was amusing to see the pretty 
girl “ kidding ” the boy, and they admired her 


AND PLAIN JANE 281 

vivacity. Especially as it was not themselves 
that her high spirits were likely to involve in a 
wetting. 

“ You may get a little spray on you — per- 
haps those beautiful white clothes will shrink,” 
Mary protested. 

The men laughed again. “ Jove, but she’s 
a pretty girl,” one of them remarked in a low 
voice; not too low for Mary to hear him. 

Jane stepped forward hastily. “ Perry,” 
she had begun, when Margery joined the 
group. 

“ Hello, Perry, hello everybody,” Margery 
said listlessly. 

Mary turned to her gayly. “ Hello, 
Margie,” she cried, “ I’m ever so glad to see 
you! Come for a sail with me? ” 

Margery hesitated and looked at Jane. 

“ Oh, come on,” said Mary impatiently. 
“ Perry’s afraid because the wind is a little 
brisk. But you’re a good sport, Margie! 
Come on. I’m only going down to the mouth 
of the bay and back — come on. It will be 
glorious. I’m crazy to have you,” she added 
with a sudden smile that was very winning. 

Jane, watching Margery, was surprised at 


282 


MARGERT MORRIS 


the look of pleasure that flashed across her face. 
“ Do you really want me? ” she asked. “ I’d 
love to go with you. Besides, I want to go out 
and wave to Katie — she’s on the Mermaid , and 
I promised her I would if I could.” 

Perry turned to her. “ Look here, Mar- 
gery,” he protested, “ there’s a storm coming — 
I wouldn’t go if I were you.” 

Mary screwed up her face in an absurd 
grimace. “ Oh, don’t pay any attention to 
him, Margie — he’s just an old-stick-in-the- 
mud.” 

The men laughed again, more at Mary’s 
comical expression than at her words. “ I 
want you, even if Perry doesn’t,” she went on 
with another teasing glance at Perry. 

Margery jumped down on the bow of the 
boat. “ I’m all ready,” she said. 

Perry drew near to the edge of the wharf. 
“ See here, Margery,” he expostulated, “ you 
oughtn’t to go! I’ll go, but I don’t want you 
to go! ” 

Again J ane was surprised at Margery’s ex- 
pression. “ Why, she looks as though her feel- 
ings were hurt,” she thought. “ Margery,” 
she called, “ Perry doesn’t mean — he’s ” 


AND PLAIN JANE 283 

But Margery did not hear her. Mary had 
joined her in the boat and was untying the 
painter. 

“ Good-bye, little one,” cried Mary, with a 
wave of her hand to Perry. The boat slid 
away from the wharf. 

“ Plague,” cried Perry, and with a flying 
leap landed on the deck. 

The Prudent Sally sped down the bay to- 
ward the open sea, and Jane went back to the 
club-house feeling both anxious and depressed. 
She did not want to join the party, neither did 
she like not being asked. Wondering what 
Esther and Polly were doing, but feeling too 
shy to go in search of them, she went home, and 
exchanging her big, black hat for a small scar- 
let cloth tam-o’-shanter, she took a steamer-rug 
and sofa-pillows and went down to the rocks. 
There on the lea side of a big boulder she 
spread the rug and stretched herself out to 
read. Far out in the bay she could see a white 
sailboat scudding before the wind and she 
wondered if it was the Prudent Sally and how 
the sailors were faring. 

Her book was interesting and presently she 
had forgotten everything else in its absorbing 


284 MARGERY MORRIS 

pages. Suddenly something cold and wet 
splashed upon her cheek. She sat up and 
looked about her; it was raining. 

“ Well, Perry was right,” she thought as she 
scrambled to her feet and hastily gathered her 
belongings together. “ Won’t Mary be mad? 
It’s blowing hard, too! ” 

It was pouring by the time Jane reached the 
cottage. “ Hello, Cousin Willy,” she called to 
her cousin who was busy pulling up awnings 
and closing windows. “ I very nearly got 
soaked. I was so busy reading that I didn’t 
notice the rain coming.” She went to the win- 
dow. “ Why, you can’t see a thing of the bay 
— it’s raining so! Margery and Perry went 
out sailing — I do hope that they get back in 
time! ” 

“ Of course they would turn back and come 
in. How nervous you are getting, child. 
Speaking of being nervous, I’m rather upset 
about your mother. From the papers it cer- 
tainly does look as though there would be war 
in Europe — and if so, your mother may have 
difficulty in getting away! ” 

“ Oh, Cousin Willy!” 

“ Yes, though, of course, your mother’s be- 


AND PLAIN JANE 285 

ing an American citizen will make a difference. 
I don’t trust those Germans — I never did like 
them.” 

Worried, Jane picked up a newspaper and 
studied the staring headlines. War and her 
mother over there! Why, it was just time for 
them to be landing at Hamburg now ! 

“ Don’t look so anxious, Jane,” expostulated 
Cousin Willy, taking the paper away from her. 
“ They will be all right.” 

The rain poured down steadily and the 
little sitting-room grew so dark that Cousin 
Willy lighted the lamp. “Almost time for 
supper,” she remarked, folding up her sew- 
ing. 

Jane wandered to the window and looked 
out. She was worried about her mother, and 
restless, and the gray, rain-swept bay depressed 
her. “ Wouldn’t it be horrid to be out there 
in a little open boat? ” she thought, drum- 
ming her fingers against the glass. “ I do 
hope Margery got back in time to avoid the 
storm! She’s such a dear! I wonder what 
was wrong with her? — she didn’t look as happy 
as usual.” 

“ I think we’re in for a storm,” said Cousin 


286 


MARGERY MORRIS 


Willy. “ Did you say, Jane, that Margery 
had gone out sailing? ” 

“ Yes,” answered Jane. “ Cousin Willy, I 
am going out on an errand — I won’t be long.” 

Going into the little hall she took down her 
mackintosh from its peg. 


CHAPTER XXI 


" WHERE IS MARGERY? ” 

“ Sarah,” asked Jane at the front door of 
the Morris cottage, “ is Miss Margery at 
home? ” 

“No, Miss Jane, she’s went to Winchester 
with Mrs. Endicott. Mrs. Endicott says this 
morning not to expect them if they are not 
back by half-past five.” 

“ But, Sarah — I don’t believe Miss Margery 
went to Winchester — I saw her down on the 
wharf this afternoon.” 

“ Oh, yes, Miss Jane — I’m sure she did. 
Perhaps it was later she went, but it’s sure I 
am that she did.” 

“ Won’t you ask Mr. Morris? ” 

Sarah departed rather unwillingly and came 
back a few minutes later to say that Mr. Morris 
was positive that Margery had gone to Win- 
chester. 


287 


288 


MARGERY MORRIS 


Outside in the pouring rain Jane stood 
thinking, forgetting in her anxiety to open her 
umbrella. Should she go to Mrs. Endicott’s 
house and ask for Perry? How silly and anx- 
ious she would seem if everything was all 
right and Margery and Perry had come in long 
ago ! And where would it lead her in connec- 
tion with the Endicotts — would they take it as 
a sign that she had definitely given up all oppo- 
sition to becoming one of the Watkins clan? 
Might they not take too much for granted? 

A gust of wind swept in from the sea, whip- 
ping her hair into her eyes. Jane shuddered; 
how would a frail sailboat fare should it 
chance to be out in such a squall? 

She ran down the road toward the Endi- 
cotts\ The rain was pouring down fiercely 
and beating against the door. The maid who 
answered Jane’s ring was plainly annoyed at 
having to face the storm and answered her 
questions briefly. 

Mr. Perry was out — had been out since 
luncheon. No, she didn’t know when he would 
be back. She didn’t think that he would be 
home for dinner. Mrs. Endicott had said that 
nobody but Andrew would be in for dinner. 


AND PLAIN JANE 289 

“May I see Andrew, please?” demanded 
Jane, edging past the maid into the big living- 
room and hall combined. “ Tell him it’s Jane 
Gale, and that I must see him about something 
very important.” 

The maid disappeared and Jane stood wait- 
ing, the water running off her raincoat to the 
polished floor. “ Of course, Margery is all 
right,” she kept assuring herself, “ of course 
she is.” 

There was a patter of rubber-soled shoes on 
the bare floors, and Andrew came running in 
from tjhe kitchen where he had been spending 
a sociable half-hour with the cook. 

“ Hello, Jane,” he grinned. 

“Andy, dear, do you know where Perry 
is?” 

“ Yep — he’s gone with Jack to Winches- 
ter.” 

“When did he go?” 

“ I don’t know — after lunch, I think. I 
wish everybody hadn’t gone away — it’s so 
lonely here. Can’t you stay, Jane? ” 

“ No, dear, not to-day. But you are sure 
you haven’t seen Perry? ” 

“ Yep — but please stay, Jane.” 


MARGERT MORRIS 


290 

Out in the rain once more Jane stood trying 
to make up her mind what to do. Of course 
Margery and Perry had returned from the bay 
and had gone to Winchester together, and 
everything was all right. She was, she assured 
herself, a perfect goose to get excited. 

She paused and looked at the dreary gray 
bay. Still, she would walk down to the club 
and ask if Perry’s boat had come in yet — just 
to make sure. 

The group of men she had seen on the wharf 
with Mary and Perry were sitting by the fire- 
side smoking and talking, but no one else was 
about. After some searching, Jane found the 
janitor in the little pantry, contentedly reading 
his paper. 

He had not seen the boat come, but appar- 
ently he felt no concern. “ They’ll have to put 
in,” he insisted. “ Perry wouldn’t stay out in 
no squall like this! ” 

“ But won’t you go and see if the boat is 
here? ” persisted Jane. 

Unwillingly, the man put down his paper 
and went out. “ It ain’t in the boat-house,” 
he announced, coming back. “ But perhaps 
Perry has anchored it in the bay an’ come in 


AND PLAIN JANE 291 

shore in somebody’s canoe — he does that some- 
times.” 

“ Can’t you see the boat in the bay? ” 

“ No, ma’am, I can’t. You might take a 
squint along the other wharves. They might 
have put in down there.” 

To Jane’s anxious inquiries along the public 
wharves there was but one answer: no one had 
seen Perry’s boat. 

“ Guess he ain’t got in yet,” said one old salt, 
more communicative than the others. “ His 
bo’t’s well known — real sociable chap he is. 
Hope he ain’t got caught in the squall. There’s 
been a heap of parties drownded off that there 
p’int.” 

“ Oh, don’t, don’t! ” cried Jane. 

“ There was young Jim Spruance,” contin- 
ued the man, delighting in horrors after the 
manner of his kind, “ three summers ago he 
went out in a gale, an’ the fust thing anybody 
knowed about him, was findin’ his bo’t floatin’ 
upside down.” 

Jane ran back to the club-house. Perhaps 
Dick would know where Margery and Perry 
were. She would telephone to him, and then 
her mind entirely at ease — for of course they 


MARGERY MORRIS 


292 

must be safe at Winchester — she would go 
home. Cousin Willy must be wondering what 
had become of her. 

She went to the office and rang up the hotel 
in Winchester where Dick and Sam were stay- 
ing. The clerk who answered was doubtful if 
he could find Dick, but after a long interval, in 
which Jane stood first on one foot and then on 
the other, Dick’s voice said, “ Hello ! ” 

“ Oh, Dick, this is Jane. I’m sorry to 
bother you, but is Perry there with you? ” 

“ No. He hasn’t come over yet.” 

“ Well, do you know whether Margery is 
with Mrs. Endicott — they were going to have 
dinner at the country club? ” 

“ Why, really, Jane, I couldn’t tell you — 
we boys are all going to have dinner here and 
then go up to the club later.” 

“ Dick, I’m feeling rather worried about 
Margery and Perry — they went out in the sail- 
boat before the rain.” 

“ What? I can’t hear you — there’s such a 
racket here. Sorry ! ” 

Jane’s voice rose shrilly. “Margery and 
Perry went out in Perry’s boat before the 
rain.” 


AND PLAIN JANE 293 

“ Out in the boat — with a storm coming? 
You couldn’t hire Perry to take a girl along on 
a trip like that.” 

“ But, Dick — they did go! It was all that 
Mary’s fault.” Breathlessly, Jane poured 
forth the story. 

“ Hmm,” said Dick as she finished. “ Perry 
wouldn’t stay out in a storm like this. They’re 
probably down at the club having tea.” 

“ I’m here at the club now. The Sally 
hasn’t come in — and it isn’t at any of the other 
wharves.” 

“ Hmm,” Dick’s voice sounded anxious. 
“ Well, I’ll tell you what we will do. Jack has 
got the car here, and we’ll run down to the 
country club, and if Margery is there all 
right I’ll telephone you. You’re at the 
boat club, you say? All right — I won’t be 
long.” 

He rang off and Jane sank down beside the 
telephone booth to wait. The men in front of 
the fireplace went out laughing and talking 
and a deep quiet settled down. Outside, Jane 
could hear the rain beating against the win- 
dows ; from the big living-room came the sound 
of a log in the fireplace breaking and falling 


2 94 


MARGERY MORRIS 


apart with a shower of sparks. A clock ticked 
over her head, each tick seeming loader as the 
deserted building grew quieter and quieter. 
Jane turned and watched it. Five, ten min- 
utes ticked slowly away. 

At last, unable to control her nervousness 
and sense of dread, she went into the living- 
room and picked up a magazine at random. 
The telephone bell rang. 

She ran to answer it. 

“ Is this the Sparhawk Inn? ” squeaked a 
voice, and J ane put back the receiver. 

The silence settled down again. Jane tried 
to put her thoughts on the magazine in her 
hand, which happened to be a comic weekly, 
reading over and over the same joke, vainly 
trying to understand it. 

At last the telephone bell rang. “ Jane,” 
Dick’s tone was worried, “ have you learned 
anything more? — Margery isn’t here — the girls 
sav she decided to stay home and see Katie 
off.” 

“ Oh, Dick — then she is out in the boat? ” 

“ I’m afraid so. We ’phoned to Mary’s 
family — they don’t know anything about her 
either — haven’t seen her since luncheon. W e’re 


AND PLAIN JANE 295 

going to get into communication with the life- 
saving stations at once.” 

Dick called off, but Jane stood staring at the 
telephone, still holding the receiver to her ear. 
Margery, dear Margery, what was happening 
to her, what had already happened? 

“ Operator? ” questioned the girl at the ex- 
change. With a groan Jane hung up the re- 
ceiver and went home. 

Cousin Willy had been anxiously watching 
for her. “ Why, Jane,” she cried, throwing 
open the door, “ what has happened — what 
kept you so long? ” 

Briefly as she could, Jane told the story. 

Cousin Willy was grave. “ They may be 
all right,” she said. “ Until we know defi- 
nitely we can always hope. But we can’t help 
feeling anxious.” 

Jane dropped into a chair. “ Oh, dear,” 
she cried. “ Oh, dear! ” 

“ Come, come — you mustn’t collapse yet. 
Come out into the kitchen, where it is warmer.” 
Cousin Willy took off Jane’s wet raincoat and 
piloted her out into the kitchen, where she 
made her drink some hot tea. 

“ But, Cousin Willy,” Jane exclaimed, put- 


296 MARGERY MORRIS 

ting down her cup, “ think of it — Margery, 
dear little Margery. Oh, suppose anything 
has happened — what will her father and mother 
do? And her grandfather? He adores her.” 

“ And what will Mr. Watkins do? Perry 
is the apple of his eye. He has been so proud 
of the boy ; of his ability, and his fine physique, 
and his splendid truthful nature.” 

“ Oh, don't, Cousin Willy, don’t! ” 

“ Yes, we mustn’t talk that way, Jane. I’m 
sure they are all right — they must be all right. 
We are just feeling anxious — unnecessarily so, 
perhaps. The storm seems to be going over — 
see, it’s raining very gently now, and the wind 
has died down.” 

She drew her chair nearer to the stove. 
“ How chilly it is getting — we must build a 
fire in the dining-room fireplace.” 

The front door opened, and there were rapid 
footsteps through the house. “ Jane, Jane! ” 
called Jack. 

Jane ran into the dining-room. “ Oh, Jack, 
have you heard anything? ” 

“ No. Dick has gone out with the men from 
the life-saving station in their power boat. He’s 
been friendly with the captain ever since he 


AND PLAIN JANE 297 

came up. I wanted to go, but they took Dick. 

I — I — well, Perry ” He stopped, unable 

to go on. 

Jane read unspoken anguish in the boy’s 
eyes. “ It will be all right, Jack, I am sure it 
will,” she said bravely. “ Perry is too good a 
sailor to let anything happen. They have 
probably put into port somewhere.” 

“ I’m going down to the club wharf, Dick 
will signal if they find them.” 

“ I’ll go with you.” 

“ But first, Jack,” interposed Cousin Willy, 
“ you must have some hot tea — it will be chilly 
down there on the wharf.” 

“ Aunt Kate got into communication with 
the life-saving station at Winchester,” he said 
as he took the cup. “ What time did Perry 
and Margery go out, Jane? ” 

Again Jane told the story. 

“ Mary Benton was bound to make trouble 
for somebody this summer,” he commented bit- 
terly. “ She’s been so set on showing off. I’m 

glad that Perry ” He paused ; it was hard 

for him to say it, but he went on bravely. 
“ I’m glad that Perry went with those two 
girls. They would be badly off without him. 


298 MARGERY MORRIS 

Margery doesn’t know a thing about boats, and 
Mary doesn’t know so very much more. If 
you’re ready, J ane, we’ll go.” 

Taking a lantern they started off for the 
club. It was closed; the janitor, evidently 
thinking that it would not be used that cold, 
rainy evening, had locked up and gone home. 
In the lee of the building they found a fairly 
comfortable spot where they could stare out 
over the black water. 

“ Jack! There’s a signal now,” cried Jane. 
“See — there! Now!” 

“ It’s only the revolving light on the point.” 

“Oh! Oh, dear!” 

Jane sank back again and buried her cold 
hands in her pockets. She felt that she could 
never stand the strain of waiting, waiting. 
She wished that Jack would say something; 
but he was silent, crouching with his legs 
drawn up and his forehead resting on his 
knees. 

“ Jack! ” cried Jane again, “ there’s a light 
now — perhaps it’s a signal ! ” 

Jack sprang up. “Where?” he cried 
hoarsely. “ Where? ” 

The light drew nearer. 


AND PLAIN JANE 299 

J ack picked up the lantern and started down 
the long dark wharf. 

<f It’s only Mr. Morse looking after his boat,” 
he said, coming back. With a long sigh he 
crouched down again. 

Jane stared out over the black water, and 
shook with a nervous chill. Suddenly through 
the darkness there was the sound of some one 
crying and of stumbling footsteps, and Andrew 
came upon them. 

“ I saw the lantern,” he sobbed, “ an’ I 
thought it was you. Oh, Jane, I want Perry 
so!” 

He threw himself into Jane's arms, and she 
held him fast. 

“ It will be all right, dear,” she soothed him; 
“ the boat from the life-saving station has gone 
out, and they will find them. I'm sure they 
will.” 

Afraid that Andrew might take cold she 
wrapped her raincoat and golf cape about him 
as best she could. Exhausted by his fright 
and crying, the child grew quiet and drowsy. 
Jane's arms ached from the burden of the re- 
laxed heavy little body, but she continued to 
hold him fast, finding help and strength in the 


MARGERT MORRIS 


3 °° 

necessity of comforting something younger and 
weaker than herself. 

Suddenly Jack sprang to his feet. “ There 
comes a boat,” he cried. “ They are back 
earlier than I expected. They didn’t signal! 

I ” He ran down the wharf. 

The boat drew in and Dick got out. 

“ We found the sailboat,” he said brokenly; 
“ it was upside down. That — that — was — all 
we found.” 


CHAPTER XXII 


WAITING 

Quietly they went up to the Endicott cot- 
tage. There was nothing else for them to do 
but to wait. 

“ They may know more at Winchester,” 
Dick had said. 

The frightened maids had built a fire in the 
living-room fireplace and they clustered about 
it. They were all very silent; Jack had col- 
lapsed on the big divan, lying face downward; 
Jane sat in a low chair with Andrew in her lap, 
while Dick prowled nervously about, going 
every few minutes to the front door to open it 
and look out into the dreary night. 

“ The storm seems to be pretty well over,” 
he reported, coming back and gazing thought- 
fully into the fire. “ Everything’s pretty wet 
and dripping yet. I wonder — what’s that?” 

301 


MARGERY MORRIS 


3 °2 

There was a noise outside, and he went to 
the door. Jack sprang up and hurried after 
him. Jane listened intently. 

“ Just the Prestons,” said Dick, closing the 
door. “ They’d heard the news and came to 
inquire.” 

With a groan Jack threw himself face down- 
ward on the divan again, and Andrew, fright- 
ened at his brother’s despair, dug his sunburnt 
fists into his eyes and tried manfully not to 
cry. Jane forgot her own dread in a feeling 
of pity for the boys. She wished that she knew 
what to say to comfort them. She forgot that 
they were detested stepbrothers and thought 
of them with the yearning sympathy a real 
sister might have had. 

There were rapid footsteps across the 
veranda and Cousin Willy came in. “ Does 
Mr. Morris know? ” she asked when she heard 
the news. 

Dick shook his head. “ I couldn’t tell him,” 
he answered. “ He thinks that Margery is at 
Winchester with Mrs. Endicott. He’s very 
delicate, and we must spare him all we can. 
There is no reason why he should know un- 
til ” He stopped abruptly and with his 


AND PLAIN JANE 303 

hands deep in his pockets walked to the win- 
dow. 

Silence settled down again and Jane sat 
staring into the already dying fire. Her 
thoughts were sad and reproachful ones. Step 
by step she was reviewing her acquaintance 
with Perry. How concerned he had been that 
first day when he thought he had run her down 
with the car; how kind he had been about 
dancing with her that night at the dance when 
she had been so neglected and unhappy. Jane 
had come to learn how sought after he was as 
a dancing partner. With an aching heart she 
remembered how sincerely anxious he had been 
to welcome his new mother and sisters and to 
make their paths pleasant ones, and how hurt 
he had been at her refusal to be friendly. She 
recalled how little spoiled he had been by his 
good looks and his ability, and by his position 
as a rich man’s son. Suppose that the worst 
were to happen, what would Jack and Andrew 
do? How would they bear his loss? And 
how would his father bear it? Across the dark 
sea Jane’s heart suddenly went out in sym- 
pathy to that hated stepfather. 

She remembered that he had lost a little 


MARGERY MORRIS 


3°4 

girl, and that he had wanted her to take some- 
thing of the place of that daughter. Jane, 
gazing at the dull red embers, clasped Andrew 
tight and tortured herself with the thought that 
if she had not refused to accept her stepfather 
and brothers, they now might all be safe and 
happy in the old Berkshire home, and that dis- 
aster would not be hovering close. 

Dick jumped to his feet. “ I can’t stand it 
any longer,” he muttered. “ Got to do some- 
thing — going down to the life-saving sta- 
tion.” 

Jane hesitated; then she ran after Dick and 
joined him. Together the}^ splashed along the 
road leading through the village to the life- 
saving station. The rain had stopped and now 
and then the moon shone from behind the shift- 
ing clouds, lighting up the little pools of water 
lying in the roadway. Through the lighted 
windows of the summer cottages and the homes 
of the village people they could see happy 
groups. 

“ Doesn’t it seem strange to you, Dick,” 
J ane observed, “ that all these people can be 
so happy when we’re feeling so miserable? ” 

“ I suppose that the people in Europe are 


AND PLAIN JANE 305 

wondering — if they have time to wonder at 
all — how we can be so care-free over here when 
they have such awful things hanging over 
them.” 

Jane did not answer. She was thinking of 
those staring headlines in the paper, and won- 
dering where her mother was and what she was 
doing. Cousin Willy was sure she must be 
safe, but suppose She stopped, not dar- 

ing to let herself think. 

But if only she had not made her mother so 
unhappy! And Marion, too. She had not 
written to Marion all summer. She would 
write to-morrow and ask to be forgiven. 

Dick hurried along in silence, and Jane, 
taking short, hurried little steps to keep up 
with his long strides, splashing through puddles 
and stumbling over inequalities in the ground, 
met her conscience face to face, and sorrow- 
fully repented. 

The guard at the station was not very en- 
couraging. They had communicated with the 
station at Winchester, but the boat there had 
not come in yet, and they knew nothing. 
There was just the chance, of course, that some 
fishing boat might have come to the rescue of 


3 o6 MARGERT MORRIS 

those in the sailboat, but it was useless to count 
on it. 

Deeply depressed they climbed the hill back 
to the house. 

Jack was waiting for them. “ Have you 
any news? ” he cried. “ I’ve been out trying 
to get Aunt Kate on the telephone. Can’t get 
her anywhere. I don’t see why she doesn’t 
send us some message! ” 

Sadly they went into the house and sat down. 

An automobile stopped before the door, and 
someone called. 

“There’s somebody!” cried Cousin Willy. 

They ran outside. A strange man was 
climbing out of the car, and Jane heard him 
giving Dick directions about warm blankets. 
Jane raised brimming eyes to him. “ Is — 
is ” she faltered. 

He smiled and pointed to the back seat. 
Someone moved and spoke her name in a low 
voice, and Jane realized that it was Mar- 
gery. 

“ Margie,” she cried, “ oh, Margie, what 
has ” She stopped, conscious that Mar- 

gery was very white and exhausted, and that 
she was wrappd in strange, uncouth garments, 


AND PLAIN JANE 307 

and that her curls were wet and hanging about 
her face. 

Margery spoke again. “ Jane,” she said 
faintly. “ Perry — is ” 

The car moved away. 

Jane’s heart stood still. The worst had 
happened then. She slipped her hand under 
Jack’s arm. “ Jack,” she said softly, “ you 
must be brave. Your father ” 

Another car drew up, and from the back 
they lifted a tall figure with a bandaged arm. 

The strange man waved them all aside ex- 
cept Jack and Dick. “ Here, you boys,” he 
said, “ you’ll have to help to carry him in.” 

They drew aside and slowly and carefully 
Perry was carried into the house. Jane ran 
to hold the door open. 

As the little procession passed her Perry 
opened his sunken eyes, and a faint smile 
crossed his haggard face. “ It’s all right, 
sister Jane,” he said weakly, and his eyelids 
closed. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


OPEN DOORS 

Margery never could speak of that after- 
noon. 

“I don’t remember — I can’t remember!” 
she would cry if questioned. “ We just hung 
on and on, and it was so cold.” 

She only knew that they had clung on in the 
darkness and the storm to that frail, bobbing 
little upturned boat ; that she had grown colder 
and colder and at last almost unconscious, and 
that she would have let go if it had not been for 
Perry’s firm grasp beneath her shoulders and 
Perry’s voice urging and commanding her to 
keep on. She had been too exhausted to feel 
more than a vague relief when she was lifted 
on board the fishing boat that had found them 
floating in the stormy sea. 

The sail down the bay had been a pleasant 
one. As the Prudent Sally left the wharf, 
308 


AND PLAIN JANE 309 

Margery had settled down near the bow, enjoy- 
ing the rapid motion and the fresh wind blow- 
ing against her face. It was nice of Mary, 
she thought, to want her to come. She was 
glad that someone wanted her. 

At the mouth of the bay Perry had tried to 
persuade Mary to turn back, but Mary had 
only laughed at him and, calling him “ Old 
Granny,” had kept the boat headed for the 
open sea. 

“ We must go out and wave to Margery’s 
friend, the waitress, as she goes by in the Win- 
chester boat,” she declared. “ For shame, 
Perry,” she laughed; “are you such a snob 
that you won’t wave to a waitress? ” 

Perry flushed and was silent, but as the wind 
rose and the waves grew rougher he had in- 
sisted on taking the rudder from Mary. 

The big boat from Winchester went by, and 
Margery had waved violently to a familiar 
little figure that fluttered a white handkerchief 
in return. The steamer churned itself almost 
out of sight and Perry persisted that they must 
go back to land. 

Then the wind and rain had come. 

After that Margery could remember very 


MARGERY MORRIS 


31° 

little. The rain had come down harder and 
harder, and the waves had risen and the little 
boat had rolled and plunged. She had been 
frightened, and Perry’s face had been very 
grim and set as he clung to the rudder and 
gave orders to Mary; and Mary had lost her 
head and collapsed, a pitiful sobbing heap, in 
the bottom of the boat. Margery had tried to 
help, but she was only one slender girl against 
the forces of the wind and sea. 

And then, somehow, she had found herself 
struggling in the cold water. 

The rest, mercifully, was mainly a blank to 
her. She knew that Perry had helped her to 
reach the overturned boat and then had fol- 
lowed the desperate effort just to cling on. 

What she did remember was the gradual 
coming back to full consciousness on the fish- 
ing boat, a crude place and smelling horribly 
of fish, but a blessed refuge. The fisherman 
had been kind to her, and warmed, and wrapped 
in the rough dry clothes they gave her, she was 
content to lie in the bunk, utterly weary and 
utterly thankful. With her thankfulness had 
crept in a feeling of shame that she had al- 
lowed herself to be so upset by the little things 


AND PLAIN JANE 31 1 

of life, the little hurts and slights. She had 
been very close to the great verities in that 
stormy sea, and everything else had fallen 
away into insignificance. 

The exposure had left her weak and ex- 
hausted, and it was not until several days had 
passed that she was strong enough to be told 
that Perry’s arm had been broken and that he 
was very ill, and that Mary Benton had been 
lost. 

It was a great shock to her. “ I thought 
they were safe! Oh, I thought they were 
safe ! ” she would cry, sitting up in bed, feverish 
and hoarse. “ They told me on the fishing 
boat that everyone was safe! Poor Mary, oh, 
poor, poor Mary! And are you sure Perry 
will get well? He tried so hard to save us! ” 

In the long night watches when she could not 
sleep, she grew very close to Polly. At the 
first sound from Margery’s room Polly would 
slip from her bed and, going to the excited, 
feverish girl would sit beside her, smoothing her 
hand or singing one of her funny tuneless 
songs, or oftener just quietly talking. 

When they carried her down to the big 
veranda over the water Margery grew better, 


MARGERY MORRIS 


3 12 

although she remained weak and languid and 
would lie for hours silently staring out to sea. 

“ To think,” she said one afternoon, “ that 
Friday is my birthday. I feel too old to have 
birthdays ! ” 

Polly turned toward her. “We were going 
to have a surprise party for you, Margery 
Daw, a great big one — but of course now we 
won’t on poor Mary’s account. But if Perry 
is well enough he is coming over and we’ll just 
have a little family party with the boys and 
Jane, and ourselves. Isn’t it nice to be able 
to ask Jane and the Watkins boys to things 
without anybody feeling uncomfortable? Jane 
gets along with the boys beautifully now. 
Mrs. Endicott says she doesn’t know what she 
would have done without her, for she has been 
perfectly wonderful with Perry. Poor Perry 
had been so depressed. The doctor really was 
very much worried about him for a while. A 
real sister couldn’t have been more comforting 
and helpful than Jane. She has been ever so 
brave too, for she really is awfully worried 
about her mother over there in Europe. When 
I stopped in to see Katherine this morning 
J ane was there reading to Perry, as cosy and 



“to think,’ she said, 


y y 


THAT FRIDAY IS MY BIRTHDAY 



AND PLAIN JANE 313 

contented a family group as you could wish 
to see.” 

Margery smiled. “ When she came to see 
me this morning she spoke of Perry and Jack 
a lot.” 

“ Would you like to hear more about the 
party we had planned? ” asked Polly. 

Margery nodded, and Polly, delighted to 
have found a subject that might interest her, 
hurried on with her story. 

“We were going to have everybody. A 
great big party, all the boys and girls here, and 
some of the boys Dick and Sam have come to 
know at Winchester. We were going to have 
progressive games first — your grandfather was 
a perfect dear, and said that we could do j.ust 
as we pleased — and then afterward we were 
going to dance. Jane was a wonder at think- 
ing things up to do, and she designed the 
prettiest tally cards and dance cards and little 
prizes. And the boys were the greatest help, 
too. That is, Dick and Sam were — the Wat- 
kins boys couldn’t be in it much on account of 
Jane, of course.” 

“ You see, Margery,” put in Esther, “ you 
have been such a wonderful hostess and have 


MARGERY MORRIS 


3H 

made us all have such a scrumptious time 
that we felt we simply must do something for 
you.” 

“We were going to tell you at first,” added 
Polly, “ but we knew that if you were aware of 
what was going on the very first thing that 
would happen would be that you would be 
giving the party somehow for us! ” 

“And Margery,” laughed Esther, “you were 
the hardest person to keep anything from! 
You were always guessing that something was 
up and asking us questions — until really we 
didn’t know which way to turn! We were so 
afraid that you might find it out and that the 
whole thing would fall flat. And we had such 
a time trying to arrange for things under your 
very nose. When you went to see Katie off it 
gave us a chance to order the refreshments and 
select the prizes. Why, Margery — what is the 
matter? ” 

With her head buried in the cushions of her 
chair Margery was quivering with convulsive 
sobs. 

She slept badly that night, and Polly, hear- 
ing her tossing and tumbling, went to her. 
“What’s the trouble, honey?” she asked. 


AND PLAIN JANE 315 

“ Oh, Polly,” sighed Margery, seizing 
Polly’s cool hand between her two hot ones, 
“ life is awfully hard. It’s so hard to know 
what to do. When I first went to Renwyck’s 
Town I had to get over being a horrid selfish 
little pig — that seemed hard enough to do. 
And then I went and tried to do good to people 
and made an awful mess of things — and life 
seemed queer and complicated. And then I 
came up here, and began to have hurt feelings, 
and to be queer and jealous. Oh, Polly, it was 
awful. I knew that something was up about 
the surprise party, and I thought that you were 
laughing at me behind my back — and I was so 
hurt and horrid. Perhaps if I had not been 
so hurt that day I shouldn’t have gone out with 
Mary, — and all this dreadful thing wouldn’t 
have hap.pened.” 

Polly made no answer, but patted her arm. 

“ I wonder what it will be next? ” said Mar- 
gery after a while. 

“ There’s always something, I suppose,” 
Polly said sagely. “ The only thing to do is 
not to expect perfection and to go ahead as 
best you can.” 

Gradually the shadow of tragedy lifted from 


MARGERT MORRIS 


3 l6 

the little group, although neither Perry nor 
Margery could ever forget. After several 
long talks with her grandfather, Margery came 
to have a more normal view of her own sensi- 
tiveness and also, although poor Mary’s 
memory was never blamed, to recognize some- 
thing of the disaster a reckless young girl, less 
really proficient in athletics than vain, too 
often brings upon herself and those about 
her. 

On the evening of her birthday the little 
group met once again at the Morris cottage. 
They were a little more subdued than usual, 
for Perry and Margery were still rather frail, 
but they were very happy. 

Jane was especially contented, for a cable- 
gram had come just before she left Buttercup 
Cottage from her mother saying that she was 
safe in England and would be home as soon as 
passage could be procured. 

“ Hasn’t it been fun? ” whispered Polly to 
Jane as good-byes were being said at the end of 
the evening. “ It’s too bad, though, that Mar- 
gery couldn’t have had her surprise party! 
Oh, what’s that? ” 

There was the sound of an automobile stop- 


AND PLAIN JANE 317 

ping, and the front door opened. Turning, 
the girls saw enter a tall graceful woman with 
a wealth of light curly hair, and behind her a 
tall dark young man with clear cut features 
like Margery’s. 

There was a cry and Margery came run- 
ning across the room. “ Oh, mamma! Oh, 
papa! ” 

Jane smiled at Polly. “ That’s a better sur- 
prise party than the one we had planned,” she 
said. 

Her stepbrothers took Jane home. “ Isn’t 
Mrs. Morris sweet? ” she chattered to them. 
“And isn’t Mr. Morris young and handsome? 
Just think, father and mother will be home 
soon, too! We must give them a wonderful 
welcome when they come.” 

Andrew looked up at her and smiled his 
funny, toothless smile. “ It’s nice to hear you 
say ‘ father and mother,’ Jane. It sounds so 
homey.” 

“ It sure does,” agreed Jack. 

They strolled on in silence, Jane thinking of 
her mother and of the stepfather she meant 
to welcome. And after all, she decided, it was 
going to be pleasant to have big brothers to go 


3 1 8 MARGERT MORRIS 

about with, and a little brother to love and 
pet. 

“ Do you remember, Perry, what you said 
to me once about the Irish having a saying 
that when God closes one door He opens 
two? ” 

The boys left her at the door and Jane 
went in. 

Cousin Willy was sitting by the table 
knitting. “ Well, did you have a pleasant 
evening? ” she asked. 

Jane sat down and threw back her cloak. 
“ Oh, a lovely time,” she said happily. 

Cousin Willy glanced up at her, noting her 
animation and the warm color in her cheeks. 
“ Do you know, Jane,” she said, “ you have 
improved a good deal this summer. Your 
mother will be very much pleased when she 
sees you. You’re not nearly so awkward and 

shy, and really, you look ” She was about 

to say “ you look very pretty,” but as she was 
Cousin Willy she hastily changed it into “ you 
look rather neat and fat.” 

J ane laughed. Cousin Willy’s critical atti- 
tude toward her no longer irritated or de- 
pressed her, 


AND PLAIN JANE 319 

“ Yes,” she said gaily, “ I’ve been going 
through opened doors. Margery has helped 
me to break a trace.” She laughed. “ I 
mean,” she cried, “ to take a brace! ” 

The Stories in this Series are : 

MARGERY MORRIS 
MARGERY MORRIS— MASCOT 
MARGERY MORRIS AND PLAIN JANE 
MARGERY IN THE WOODS (in press) 

























